Posted at 6 p.m. Friday, Sept. 5

All the sex in "True Blood" makes it difficult to remember the new drama is a vampire tale.

Or maybe it’s just my problem. I keep seeing Ryan Kwantan’s naked rear instead of any blood-sucker’s fangs—which, by the way, look ridiculous on this new HBO series debuting at 8 p.m. Sunday.

Created by "Six Feet Under" mastermind Alan Ball, "True Blood" begins shortly after vampires have "come out of the coffin" to live with humans after the invention of Tru Blood, a synthetic drink that meets all their nutritional requirements. They don’t have to feed off humans any longer.

But some still crave the real thing—a conflict that unfortunately isn’t explored enough in the early episodes. The series spends too much time with the humans in the Louisiana swamp town of Bon Temps.

There, waitress Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) deals with her own "otherness." Sookie can read minds, but not that of a sexy vamp who walks into the bar where she works. Soon Sookie falls for the mysterious, 173-year-old Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) and they strike up a romance, much to the chagrin of Sookie’s horn-dog brother Jason (Kwantan), whose sexual partners keep turning up dead.

Are they "fang-bangers" who have been killed by vamps? Or is it a human hunting them down and setting Jason? These interesting questions are put on the back burner in favor of some very slow scenes involving Sookie and Bill. They hae great potential as the characters driving the series, but at this point they’re not all that interesting as a couple.

One stand-out performer in the show is Rutina Wesley. As Sookie’s brash best friend, Tara Thornton, Wesley is the comic relief. Wesley gives Tara a sassy exterior but also shows the pain carried by a woman who has lived with disappointment—from her alcoholic mother, her drug-dealing cousin and her unrequited love for Jason.

If only she would mix it up with the vamps, "True Blood" might be more consistently enthralling.

As it is, each episode that I’ve seen starts out promising and ends with five tense minutes and a wonderful cliffhanger, but everything in between is a jumble of quirkiness, black humor, romance, a lot of talking, sex and, yes, Kwantan’s backside.

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