True Blood

True Blood

True Blood is an American television series created and produced by Alan Ball. It is based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries series of novels by Charlaine Harris, detailing the co-existence of vampires and humans in Bon Temps, a fictional, small town in the state of Louisiana...

is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 television drama series, which premiered on HBO on September 7, 2008. Created by Alan Ball

Alan Ball (screenwriter)

Alan E. Ball is an American writer, director, actor and producer for film, theatre and television.-Early life:Ball was born in Atlanta, Georgia, to Frank and Mary Ball, an aircraft inspector and a homemaker...

, the series is based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries

The Southern Vampire Mysteries

The Southern Vampire Mysteries, also known as The Sookie Stackhouse Novels, is a series of books written by bestselling author Charlaine Harris that were first published in 2001 and now serve as the source material for the HBO television series True Blood...

(also known as The Sookie Stackhouse novels) by Charlaine Harris

Charlaine Harris

Charlaine Harris is a New York Times bestselling author who has been writing mysteries for over twenty years. She was born and raised in the Mississippi River Delta area of the United States. She now lives in southern Arkansas with her husband and three children...

.

The series revolves around Sookie Stackhouse

Sookie Stackhouse

Sookie Stackhouse is the fictional protagonist and narrating voice of Charlaine Harris' The Southern Vampire Mysteries and the television adaptation, HBO's True Blood.-Biography:...

 (Anna Paquin

Anna Paquin

Anna Helene Paquin is a Canadian-born New Zealand actress. Paquin's first critically successful film was The Piano, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1994 at the age of 11 – the second youngest winner in history...

), a telepathic

Telepathy

Telepathy , is the induction of mental states from one mind to another. The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, and has remained more popular than the more-correct expression thought-transference...

 waitress who is living in the rural town of Bon Temps, Louisiana two years after the invention of a synthetic blood called Tru Blood that has allowed vampires to "come out of the coffin" and allow their presence to be known to mankind. Now they are struggling for equal rights and assimilation, while anti-vampire organizations begin to gain power. Sookie's world is turned upside down when she falls in love with 173-year-old vampire Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer

Stephen Moyer

Stephen Moyer is an English actor who has starred as vampire Bill Compton in the HBO series True Blood since 2008.-Early life and career:Moyer was born in Brentwood, Essex...

) and for the first time must navigate the trials, tribulations and terrors of intimacy and relationships. Other characters include Tara Thornton

Tara Thornton

Tara Mae Thornton is a fictional character in Charlaine Harris's The Southern Vampire Mysteries and their television adaptation, HBO's True Blood.-Biography:...

 (Rutina Wesley

Rutina Wesley

Rutina Wesley is an American film, stage, and television actress best known for her role as Tara Thornton on the HBO series True Blood.-Early life:...

), Sookie's tough-talking best friend, her womanizing brother Jason

Jason Stackhouse

Jason Stackhouse is a fictional character from The Southern Vampire Mysteries book series by author Charlaine Harris. Introduced in the first novel, Dead Until Dark, Jason is Sookie Stackhouse's older brother and road crew supervisor for Bon Temps....

 (Ryan Kwanten

Ryan Kwanten

Ryan Christian Kwanten is an Australian actor. He played Vinnie Patterson from 1997 to 2002 on the Australian soap-opera Home and Away...

), thousand year old vampire and Sheriff of Area 5, Eric Northman

Eric Northman

Eric Northman is a fictional character in The Southern Vampire Mysteries, a series of eleven books written by New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris. He is a vampire, slightly over one thousand years old, and is first introduced in the first novel, Dead Until Dark and appears in all...

 (Alexander Skarsgard

Alexander Skarsgård

Alexander Johan Hjalmar Skarsgård is a Swedish actor. He is best known for his roles as vampire Eric Northman on the HBO series True Blood, Meekus in Zoolander and Brad Colbert in the HBO miniseries Generation Kill.-Early life:...

), and her shape-shifting boss Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell

Sam Trammell

Sam Trammell is an American stage, film and television actor. He is best known for his role as Sam Merlotte in the HBO vampire series, True Blood, which saw him nominated for a 2009 Scream Award for "Breakout Performance - Male."...

). True Blood follows a serialized format

Serial (radio and television)

Serials are series of television programs and radio programs that rely on a continuing plot that unfolds in a sequential episode by episode fashion. Serials typically follow main story arcs that span entire television seasons or even the full run of the series, which distinguishes them from...

, with every episode ending on a cliffhanger

Cliffhanger

A cliffhanger or cliffhanger ending is a plot device in fiction which features a main character in a precarious or difficult dilemma, or confronted with a shocking revelation at the end of an episode of serialized fiction...

 that leads directly into the next. Episode titles are taken from the name of a song that appears on the soundtrack of that episode.

, 48 episodes of True Blood have aired, concluding the fourth season.

Series overview

Season		Episodes	Originally aired		DVD DVD A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....  and Blu-ray Blu-ray Disc Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...  release dates
			Season premiere Season premiere In North America, a season premiere is the first episode of a new season of a given television show. It often airs in September or October, after several months of reruns.-Evaluating the changes:...	Season finale Season finale A season finale is the final episode of a season of a television program...	Region 1	Region 2	Region 4
	1	12
	2	12
	3	12
	4	12			align="center"	align="center"	align="center"
	5	12	align="center"	align="center"	align="center"	align="center"	align="center"

Season 5 (2012)

On August 11, 2011, HBO announced that True Blood will be renewed for a 5th season consisting of 12 episodes, premiering in the Summer of 2012.

Minisodes

HBO began airing six mini-episodes on April 24, 2010 to lead up to the season three premiere.

#	Title	Written by	Original air date

External links

• Official True Blood website at HBO