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‘True Blood’ Spinoff ‘Midnight, Texas’ Ordered By NBC [Video]

By Nick Younker
Published on: 10:36 PST, May 13, 2016

True Blood might have only been a loose adaptation of the “Sookie Stackhouse” novels by Charlaine Harris, but it was deeply embedded within the mythology that she created in the universe. Now, another TV series from the Harris novels has been ordered by NBC, titled Midnight, Texas.

What is immediately clear about Midnight, Texas, according to Deadline, is that even though it is closely related to the characters that were present in True Blood, there are going to be some significant differences between this series on NBC and the True Blood series on HBO. Mostly because the HBO series did stray quite often from the source material by Harris, but it also featured a TV-MA theme and that will not fly on a broadcast network like NBC, due to FCC regulations and restrictions.

For those who are not familiar with the True Blood series on HBO, it featured the main character, Sookie Stackhouse, who has aligned herself with a vampire, Bill Compton, who was around when the Civil War was fought. They live in Bon Temps, Louisiana, and the show carried on with much of the characteristics of a standard vampire film with a few notable differences.

The True Blood series was based off the titular description, where True Blood is actually a blood substitute that allows vampires to get the sustenance they need without biting people. It is mass produced for the vampire community, but the only problem is, it tastes awful to vampires and they prefer warm human blood.

The vampires of True Blood also live out in the open and humans know they exist. Their open lifestyle allows them to form bonds with humans and they make deals to allow each other to benefit from one another. In these cases, the vampire drank a human’s blood and in exchange, the vampire offered the human some of its blood, which acted like a street narcotic for the human.

The True Blood series explored the principal set forth by Harris, but it went further into the deep deprivation of the underworld which humans and vampires exist in and showed fans what kind squalor humans and vampires could live in together.

Of course there were instances on True Blood where the vampires and humans lived together in a peaceful and loving existence, but the show did not feature those kind of situations very often.

Now that Midnight, Texas has been ordered by NBC, there is a real crossover between it and True Blood. That’s because most of Harris’ novels connect to each other, in some way or another. They are all about vampires, witches, werewolves, and the supernatural. But furthermore, they are all about those legends set in the south and southwest, in places like Louisiana and Texas.

Texas also played a major role in True Blood, with the rise of vampire and Christian factions in Texan cities that left the characters at odds with each other.

In True Blood, the Christian characters in Texas were actually considered the bad guys, hunting down (presumably) innocent vampires and exposing them to sunlight or staking them through the heart.

In Midnight, Texas, there will be similar circumstances in that show, if they hold true to the source material. Midnight is actually the name of the Texan city and it is very much the same as Bon Temps. It acts as a surrogate home for wayward vampires, witches, and other supernatural entities.

As a matter of fact, it also acts as a safe haven for those beings as well as human killers and psychics. So the town itself seems to be an ominous presence in the show, but it also acts in such a way that it can essentially be considered an anti-hero. Not a person, but a town.

There has been no word yet when it will premiere on NBC, but there is a better than good chance that it will be on the network’s fall lineup.

[Image via HBO]

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