Interview with the Vampire - Season 1

I have read Anne Rice's vampire novels, not all of them but enough to get a clear impression of her writing style, characterisations and settings for her work. Interview with the Vampire, for me, largely misses the mark on each and every count.The characters don't feel like the Rice's, they lack the personality and finesse, she infused her characters with. The time period/setting is in many respects, off the mark, too. Worse still, there's is politic's infused into this work. There's a dash of rather obvious negative Russian messaging and yet more woke-ism, I personally, could have done without. Acting is of a high standard. I feel its a genuine shame so much else is off. This could have worked if they had paid closer attention to Rice's actual work and knocked off the unwelcome messaging. In short, high production values and decent acting can't save this series from feeling, to this fan at least, nothing like Rice's work. The movie with Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise from the 90's, beautifully captures the essence of Rice's work and is my recommended screen adaptation.

So this is one of those titles that IMDb will remove your review if it's not positively glowing. I'm not sure why, the source material was already really progressive. It was essentially a story about two Gay men who happen to be vampires... and their violent break up. But it was subtle, it was artistic, and it had more of a story to tell about good and evil among other things. Subtle is the key, because in the 2022 version, there is nothing subtle or artistic. Vampires can't have sex in the novels to up the sexual tension and angst. In this title I guess they didn't think it would be woke enough if it wasn't 9 and 1/2 Weeks with Vampires. And then they changed Louis, which means that they had to change the entire timeline of the title, and that caused a little bit of complications with everything else, because even though there was a strong message about freeing his slaves in the book... they couldn't have it in the movie... ...Because when you are woke things don't need to make any sense. And they aged Claudia up, and that presented significant changes and relieved some of what made her character so compelling. In the end they took a beautiful novel and turned it into cheap fan fiction porn with politics and the people are eating it up. Because in this day and age, you can't respect the source material, you have to trash it.

This is the first product of a collaboration between **_Anne Rice_** and her son **_Christopher Rice_**(also an author), deciding to rework her own novels as a TV series universe after reclaiming the production rights from Universal Studios. Unfortunately some fans did not get that memo, so have dismissed it as Hollywood "woke crap" that doesn't respect the source material. You'll find many reviews online that go down that route of ignorance, but both the original books, and the reimagined TV show version are examples of how creatity can deliver variations of the same tale that both work within their selective mediums, and happily exist side by side on the shelf. They've since followed it up with The Mayfair Witches, and Talamasca: The Secret Order, but this show is still the best out of the three. The production quality is excellent, costume, make-up and set designs are all peak. But it's the succesful performances, and reimagined plot elements that give the source material a very fresh presentation that eventually takes the familiar journey from the novels, and makes it its own.