By Alex Remington Hollywood loves a romantic lead, even if landing that hunky man means defiling the crypts of the undead. On screens big and small, vampires are increasingly becoming less demonic and more sympathetic, less evil and more nuanced -- and...

Watching vampire stories, you inevitably dwell on death, as human bodies are punctured, drained of spirit, left pallid and rubbery. Why on earth do we love telling ourselves these gory, nighttime tales of blood thirst, from "Dracula" and Anne Rice's vampire chronicles to the forthcoming "Twilight" movie and the new HBO show "True Blood," which premieres Sunday at 9?

I think Alan Ball, the creator of funeral-home drama "Six Feet Under" and now "True Blood," has a theory. We humans get a lift when it comes to considering the undead creatures of the night. Immortality ain't so grand, these stories tell us. Sure, death is sad, but eternal life - millennia of relentless need, the world dying around you, no food! - is sadder. We love to ponder the misery of vampires, to remind ourselves that we really don't want to live forever.

In Ball's droll, neo-gothic "True Blood," which is based on Charlaine Har ris's "Southern Vampire" books, the vampire community isn't willing to roll over and accept our pity. The premise of this promising series is that, thanks to the creation of synthetic blood, vampires are "coming out of the coffin" in America, fighting for equal rights, unwilling to be another of this country's hidden classes. Vampire activists appear on news shows arguing for the Vampire Rights Amendment, while the church proclaims "God Hates Fangs." Obviously, Ball is spinning a metaphor of gays in the era of gay marriage; but the "True Blood"...
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