I vant to suck your blood

TV Review
True Blood: Season 4
Nov. 3 at 10 p.m.
HBO

The Queen is dead. The King is buried in concrete. Long live the American Vampire League (AVL)? Not quite.

Barmaid Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) returns to Bon Temps from a none-too-comfortable stay in faerie-land, with a year of her life lost; she finds that mainstream vampirism has taken a hit after Mississippi King Russell Edgington’s killing spree revived the fear of the fang in good old American folk.

Damage control is being spearheaded by none other than Sookie’s ex, AVL spy and former monarch procurer Vampire Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), who has supplanted Carmilla-esque Queen Sophie-Anne Leclerq with AVL aid, whereas Sheriff Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgard) is now in possession of Sookie’s home, and to his mind, "owns" the fairy princess herself.

True Blood: Season 4 amps up the political and amorous intrigue, with Sookie fending off advances from a live-in Eric, and avoiding residual feelings for off-again lover Bill -- but for longtime fans, this isn’t exactly new.

The new complication arises when a new witch coven joined by gay couple Lafayette Reynolds (Nelsan Ellis) and Jesus Vasquez (Kevin Alejandro), and headed by the talented Marnie Stonebrook (Fiona Shaw), discovers powers of necromancy, and responds to the vampire threat by cursing Eric with forgetfulness, and his enforcer Pamela Swynford De Beaufort (Kristin Bauer van Straten) with rot.

Blood threatens to spill when Sookie finds Eric shirtless, barefoot, and lost by the side of the road, and with a mere glance and a grand show of retractables, indicating she looks -- and smells -- good enough to eat.

Then there’s pretty Pam, worried over her maker’s absence, assaulting the witches and being cursed with shedding putrefying skin and hair -- a development practically guaranteeing a bloodbath.

Of the vampire lot, it’s Pam that actually best shows the vampiric mentality to advantage -- unapologetic, unflinchingly truthful, ever-loyal to her maker but fickle to all other loves, and loving all the power that goes with immortality. She wears it well, and even rot doesn’t diminish her style either.

But the plot-driver is really jealous King Bill, where at a point when Sookie and a more vulnerable Eric seem to be getting along mighty fine, gets the AVL to sign on a true death warrant for his Viking rival.

Relish the sexy mayhem, power-play and carnage as True Blood: Season 4 debuts in Asia on Nov. 3 at 10 p.m. on HBO. And if that’s six months too late for you, there’s always a Web pillage.