When The Path To True Love Sucks

THE VAMPIRE DIARIES, SEASON 1 (DVD)

Release date: August 23rd 2010
Certificate: 15 (UK)
Running time: 890 minutes approx.

Cast: Nina Dobrev, Ian Somerhalder, Paul Wesley, Katerina Graham, Candice Accola, Michael Trevino, Matthew Davis

You know the age-old story; vampire boy meets human girl. They fail in love; cue lots of drama. Recent on-screen vampire/human pairings have all shown the path to true love is filled with, well, lots of blood. So what does The Vampire Diaries have to offer that’s different?

Developed by Kevin Williamson who previously brought us Dawson’s Creek, along with the Scream movies, The Vampire Diaries is based on the books of the same name by L. J. Smith. Its set in the town of Mystic Falls in Virginia where supernatural beings have always existed.

High school student Elena Gilbert (Nina Dobrev) happens to meet one of them, Stefan Salvatore, a vampire who is 150 years old and was turned by the evil Katherine Pierce (Dobrev again in a dual role) in 1864. Stefan is a vampire with a heart and at first cannot understand why or how Elena could look so much like Katherine yet be so different from her.

Adding a dose of antagonism to the show is Ian Somerhalder as Damon’s mischievous brother Damon. He is complete opposite of his brother; selfish, hedonistic and ultimately sees humans as walking meals. He also has a history with Katherine and this causes much conflict between Damon and Elena as the episodes progress.

As supporting characters, there’s Bonnie (Katerina Graham), Elena’s best friend whose family have a long history of witchcraft. Caroline (Candice Accola), another one of Elena’s friends, she is somewhat superficial and says what she thinks but Damon soon puts a (brief) stop to that when he begins to use mind control on her. Later on we meet Pearl (Kelly Hu), a 400 year old vampire who tries to gain control of Mystic Falls and put it back the way it used to be. We also meet Alaric (Matthew Davis), a high school teacher/vampire hunter.

I was highly sceptical at first but after first couple of episodes I found myself really drawn into the stories. Midway through I can definitely say I was hooked, especially as the cast widened to include older characters such as Pearl and Alaric. There are similarities with Buffy the Vampire Slayer in that both shows shares the same archetypes and in many respects fans who miss the Slayer might enjoy Vampire Diaries as much as True Blood.

The DVD set contains quite a lot of extras such as deleted scenes and some featurettes which delve into the background and making of the series.

Overall, The Vampire Diaries proves that even well after a hundred years, the vampire legends can still thrill and fascinate as much as it did with Bram Stoker’s original 1897 novel.