Interview with the Vampire: Season1 – Blu-Ray review

Director: Various

First aired: 2022

Contains spoilers

I have previously reviewed season 1 of Interview with the Vampire and have been lucky enough, with the release of the UK Blu-Ray edition, to get a chance to look at the Blu-ray and review it.

For those who remember my original review, you’ll remember that I was rather taken with this foray into the world of Anne Rice’s vampires. I know that there were some who were not impressed, and I respect that, but I found a sumptuous TV show that took the original book’s queer subtext and made it explicit, heightening a theme that ran strong through Rice’s series. I enjoyed the move of the timeframe, thinking it did nothing to hinder the story as portrayed and allowed other perspectives and facilitated the change of ethnicity of primary character Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson), casting a fine actor into the role and opening the themes of othering wider than those, already prevalent, in the book and wider genre.

a vampire family

As I said, there were those who were less taken with the show than I was but I have to disagree with those who said it didn’t resemble the book – it did, absolutely, and the spirit of Rice’s series was strong within it. I also have to mention that the vampire genre is one that, from its very inception, cannibalised itself and took, changed and developed. Polidori may have written the first English language vampire prose, the Vampyre, but it was an expansion, maybe even a mutation, of Byron’s unpublished fragment and also borrowed the name Ruthven from Lady Caroline Lamb's Glenarvon (where Ruthven was a thinly veiled parody of Byron himself). Polidori’s work would then be changed as it was repeatedly adapted to stage. Dracula might be the cornerstone of the genre but every film and play of the novel changes aspects, sometimes radically away from Stoker’s vision, but this more often enriches rather than detracts.

Claudia and Louis

All of which preamble is just to set out that the series’ changes should be judged on merit not hated on principle. It was interesting to me to see if the series supported a second viewing and it really did. The first-time round, notwithstanding the comments above, I was watching for the familiar redrawn and for changes to the story – not negatively, but certainly with a critical eye to see how the series interfaced, or not, with the source. This time I had already done that and just watched it for the sumptuous story it proved to be. My view, score-wise, has not changed but I am glad that the series lends itself to a re-watch.

Lestat

The Blu-Ray set is a 2-disc affair with 4 episodes on disc 1 and 3 on 2. The transfer is pleasing, the print maintaining that often sumptuous, sometimes earthy look. Disc 2 also contains the extra and it is extra singular, being a Comic Con panel prior to the series premier. The panel being before the premier means that it carries little analysis through avoidance of spoiler (though there were some teasers). The lack of more extras is disappointing and the fact that they couldn’t even run to a commentary on a single episode unfortunate. Extras, of course, are just that and the series is the main course of the feast – maintaining for me the strong 7.5 out of 10 I originally awarded it but the minimal effort on the additional set content means the score for the set does not rise higher.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK