Ambrya wrote:
I have watched the first 8 eps, I have the last four on tap, but have decided to save them for a time when the kid isn't awake after he parroted the brother's character shouting "F**K!!" while I was watching an ep.
I read the first book of the series, but never made it to the later books. I don't know why--I enjoyed the first book perfectly well, it just didn't capture me enough to make it to my "MUST...READ...MORE!!!" list, and the books on that particular list are about the only ones that get my free time these days.
The first season of the series is pretty well following the first book to a "T", with a couple exceptions. The character of Tara was not in the first book. According to my friends who have read the series, a character named Tara shows up later, but she's a minor character and might not even be black. So the producers took the name of an existing character from the books and pretty much created a new primary character with that name.
However...I like her. I really find the character of Tara to be quite compelling, probably because her story with her mother is pretty much my own story. So that's a good change, also because it gives Sookie someone to bounce the internal monologue stuff off of, since they're not doing voiceovers of the first-person narration that takes place in the books.
The other big change is that the brother Jason, who is pretty much a dolt in the books, is not nearly as dedicatedly self-destructive as he is in the show. Also, the books are pretty PG-13, and HBO decided to make the show a definite R with regards to the sex and gore. That's really more Anita Blake style than Sookie Stackhouse.
Ok, I've finally seen the first 3 TV shows, and I'm in love! I think they've done a great job, and Anna Paquin and Stephan Moyer are all kinds of attractive and sexy as Sookie and Bill. Actually the whole cast is really strong. Yeah, the biggest change to the series is how main a character Tara is... oh, also Lafayette. But I agree that Tara is a great character. In the later books it's alluded to how terrible Tara's home life is, and how abused Tara is at home, but not so many details are given. But the TV is justified in making these details up, it's not like they've changed things around to the opposite.
That brings me to the PG-13/R rating thing.
I read the Anita Blake books (by Laurell K. Hamilton) long before I read the Sookie Stackhouse ones by Charlaine Harris. What struck me about the Sookie books is that very similar occurences happen to the Anita books... but the Sookie books don't go into the same
detail. In the Sookie books very raunchy or satisfying sex happens... but we are just told it's satisfying, we're not told a lick by lick and bite by bite description. Group sex happens in both series, but again Hamilton goes into a lot more detail than Harris.
In the Sookie/Harris books, the vampires are very outlaw characters, who in their own little world are deviant, and very violent. They use violence and torture, and killing is commonplace. Yet after reading the detailed descriptions in the Blake books of nuanced body language and tone of voice, the cast of eyes, the posturing, the frissons of fear and the purrs and hisses and growls and snarls of menace, the confrontations between humans and vampires in the Sookie books fall entirely flat. The Anita books are vastly more freighted with menace in the thriller scenes.
Yet the subject matter of the Sookie books is not so far off the Anita books. The style just subverts the subject matter, and makes it more light and fluffy. I think that the TV series is not really making any change to bring that violence and sex out. It's all there in the books, it's just made light of by the briefness of description.
The TV series has made more of the Lafayette character. I like it, he's interesting, and it's a great device that will serve the series well later, given what happens with Lafayette in the books.
In the first three episodes there's only one quibble I have with Jason. In the books Jason has gone through all the single and half the married women in the county, and he is described as regularly breaking the law in small ways, but he's also described as a hard worker, and that he's respected as the boss of the road crew... at least by his crew. I thought it was unfair to depict him in the show lazing in a lounge chair when he was supposed to be on the job on the crew.
Jason, and his and Sookie's cousin, are pretty much described as white trash. But Jason at least has a work ethic to his name. The TV series has Sookie pinned accurately. Sookie is a tiny bit white trash between her job and her clothing choices, but not in her lifestyle, or her rather conservative outlook and manners.
Overall I think the TV series has done a sterling job in translation. Oh, in an earlier post I said the actor playing Sam was too old and ugly. I've found out that was an artifact of the crappy Youtube clips I was watching. He is indeed the attractive 29 year old that he is in the books. (Although it would have been nice if they'd been able to find the apropriate red-head.)