Bloody Good Show

Ball says True Blood is ''more of a watercooler show than Six Feet Underever was.'' And let's be frank — it's also far less of a downer, which is what drew Ball to adapting Harris' Sookie Stackhouse novels in the first place. ''After American Beauty and Six Feet Under, I'd done a lot of contemplating mortality and the beauty of existence and blah, blah, blah,'' he says. ''And I didn't really want to do something like that again.'' But if the 52-year-old writer was just trying to lighten up, why go back to the cemetery? ''When I was 13 years old I was in a car accident with my sister who was driving the car. It was her 22nd birthday and she died,'' he explains. ''She died in front of me. She died all over me. [Death] stuck its big old ugly face in my face, and life changed.... That's why death seems to be a theme that appears in all my stuff.''

Unlike in Six Feet Under, there's little existential hand-wringing surrounding death in Blood. Same goes for sex: Forget the Fishers' endless bedroom neuroses — in Bon Temps everyone is happiest in bed. ''Vampires are sex,'' says Ball, whose actors spend a stunning amount of time in the buff (particularly Ryan Kwanten, who plays Sookie's ''cowboy Casanova'' brother Jason, and Sam Trammell, whose shape-shifting bar owner Sam Merlotte often goes to sleep as a dog and wakes up nakedly human). ''I wouldn't have signed up for it if I wasn't game,'' says Paquin. ''I just never really grew up in a culture or household where [nudity] was a big deal.'' Besides, she adds, ''on the show, even when I'm dressed I'm not really wearing that much.'' And if Sookie and Bill's sex scenes seem enthusiastic, it's because Moyer, 39, and Paquin, 26, have been an offscreen couple since they finished the pilot. All the better for the show, says Moyer: ''HBO is getting more bang for their buck, if you like.'' The kinkiest character, though, is fan favorite Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis), a gay drug dealer and born hustler, and the cousin of Sookie's best friend, Tara (Rutina Wesley). ''I didn't think I was going to get [the part], really, because I was just doing such wild stuff,'' Ellis recalls of his audition. ''I cracked open my legs and threw my crotch in Alan's face.''

That clearly made a good impression on Ball: Lafayette — who was freed from a vampire dungeon earlier this season — has stuck around far longer than he should have, as the character dies at the end of Harris' first novel. Ball has taken more than a few liberties with Harris' work, creating new relationships, changing Tara's race from white to black because it ''felt right'' to increase the African-American presence, and amping up the politics by equating vampire discrimination with homophobia (the show's title sequence includes a roadside sign that reads ''God Hates Fangs''). That metaphor spurs the drama this season, as the ultrareligious Fellowship of the Sun church, along with new convert Jason, invites all-out war with the vampires by snatching one of their leaders, forcing Sookie, Bill, and vampire ''sheriff'' Eric (Alexander Skarsgard) to go on the hunt. The resulting battle almost makes the rest of what's coming up before the Sept. 13 finale — Sam getting tossed in jail, Tara becoming bewitched, flashbacks to medieval vamps — look tame by comparison.

And Ball has even bigger shocks planned for season 3. (Spoiler alert for those who haven't read the books.) With Sookie forced into Eric's company so frequently, a new relationship is about to flourish. ''Eric and Sookie definitely have a chemistry, much to her chagrin,'' reveals Ball. ''He wants her, she doesn't want him to have her, but fate — and Eric — conspires in ways she cannot foresee and may have a hard time resisting.'' But before Ball can get into next season's bloodbath, he has to finish cleaning up after this one. ''I don't think it's quite as big a body count as last season,'' he muses. ''I can think of seven right off the bat. No, eight. Yeah, Bon Temps is a tough place to survive.'' That's the way we like it.