All I hear when I tell people what I do for a living is “vampires are stupid/overrated/tired/lame.” Okay, so sometimes I hear “no, what do you do for a living?”
And yes, I can agree on some of these points (the former). Some of the vampire tropes and stereotypes have gone way too far. Been done far too often. And have become tedious, and more than enough reason for people to become aggressively anti vampire fiction. When people think vampire tv series, the first things that come to mind are pinnacles of these tired tropes – The Vampire Diaries (and all 90,000 of its spinoffs), True Blood, and, most recently, A Discovery of Witches.
I’d argue that The Vampire Diaries is more than just “tired.” It’s the same story over and over again. The same feelings of betrayal, unrequited love (or star-crossed affection), the mindless approach to vampires as if they are nothing more than a pack of high school teens, fighting to win most popular at the school dance. And sure, that’s the series’ appeal for most viewers, but it’s also a major downer for a vast portion of the world looking for something more.
Sorry Damon, Babe.
True Blood swings in a direction I don’t even like to think about. Vampires as masters of sex. Vampires as borderline rapists and walking wangs.
So, aside from the aside, here are my top five vampire series:
Penny Dreadful
“We here have been brutalised with loss. It has made us brutal in return.”
Not entirely a vampire series, like some of the others here, Penny Dreadful is a Victorian influx of the ghosties and ghoulies, and is so aesthetically pleasing that it’ll make your heart sing. Named after the penny dreadfuls of old, the popular introduction to the thrills of horror, the series takes characters from the classics, horror characters to be precise, and throws them all into the melting pot that is Victorian London.
Sadly, Penny dreadful ended at its season 3 finale, but the seasons we were given were fantastic, pretty, and downright chilling.
Blood Ties
“I AM a vampire.”
This quirky Canadian series, based on the Blood Books, by Tanya Huff, is a vampire crime thriller with an undertone of romance in the archetypal supernatural-helps-P.I.-track-down-killers trope. It’s been done in a great many forms. In Lucifer, Moonlight, and even a stint in Angel. It’s not always a P.I. More often than not it’s a cop. But it works.
Teeeeechnically this would be one of those tired tropes I was talking about earlier, but I simply do not care, because my heart lies with police procedurals infiltrated by wacky sidekicks.
Henry Fitzroy is a graphic novelist (I know, right?) and he’s also over four hundred years old. Teaming up with Vicki Nelson to fight crime, he slowly reveals more and more of himself to her, until they become… THE ULTIMATE CRIME FIGHTING TEAM!I mean, not really. But kinda really.
Blood Ties is a great candy show. It’s got eye candy, story candy, and general feelings of the warm fluffies.
Hemlock Grove
“Shiiiiiiiiit.”
Based on the novel by Brian McGreevy, Hemlock Grove is an odd vampire tale, about a town that seems to attract the weirdest of events. Starring Bill Skarsgard as Roman Godfrey, and Landon Liboiron as Peter Rumancek, Hemlock Grove is weird, deeply disturbing, and a crazy ride into the systemic downfall of all vampire characters. At what point do they deviate from the path of morality to protect their secrets?
Hemlock Grove is awesome for a stint into the disturbing and terribly violent.
Being Human (UK)
“I expect that sounded better in your head.”
First, let me say, I tried the US version of being human. I really did. All twenty minutes that I could stomach of the first episode. But the acting was so wooden that I just couldn’t do it. It was ripped so terribly from the UK version, that I was immediately angry to spitting fury.
If you can change my mind on this, please do. I’d love to have something new and vampire-y to sink my little fangs into.
The UK version of Being Human is just the most charming tale of the tedious day ins and outs, if vampires, werewolves, and ghosts were real and forced to coexist with humans. More often than not, the humans prove themselves to be the monster, and the “monsters” reveal themselves to be what humans could never be. On a deeper level, because the ghoulies are so keenly aware of their rights and wrongs, they hold themselves and each other to a higher standard of morality. The biggest difference that I could locate between the two versions of this series was the take on Mitchell’s character. The UK’s Mitchell is the everyman. His lived so long, and changed so much, but he’s just a guy, trying to get by, and sometimes doing a really crappy job of it.
Being Human is simultaneously funny and sweet, and absolutely devastating. Worth watckhing to the very end.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel
“Strong is fighting.”
Yes, I’m cheating. But I have to. I can’t allot two spaces to this, because angel is a spinoff of the former. However, it’s still it’s own magnificent show.
Buffy is an allegory for growing up. Fighting the monsters that become worse with each year, and every personal setback. From the genius of Joss Whedon, we’re presented with a masterfully crafted reversal of roles. The pretty girl chasing the monsters, as Bernadette says in The Big Bang Theory. But what Buffy wants is to just be a girl. To have normal girl problems. And when those problems come crashing down on her as she gets older, she finds that the one thing she knows, the single aspect of her life that she can control, is fighting the evil that spews out of Sunnydale’s hellmouth.
Angel on the other hand plays to my heart strings in a completely different way. Buffy’s beau heads to L.A. to wallow in his own misery, but the Powers That Be have other plans for him, and he becomes a champion of good as a noir-style detective with his own agency, and a circle of loyal friends – that last part is debateable, sure, but it still rings true at the series’ close. It’s dark. So dark that sometimes it hurts the soul something fierce. But that darkness makes all of its bright moments worth the pain.
These two series are iconic. If you haven’t seen them, do so now. Do it. Go on. Shoo!
If you’re still here; that’s our list. I’d like to include honourable mentions, buuuuut… I can say this much. There will be a top five vampire anime list, coming soon!
