Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Jacob Anderson, Sam Reid, Assad Zaman, Eric Bogosian, Delainey Hayles, Bally Gill, Ben Daniels, Suzanne Andrade, Esme Appleton, Jake Cecil, Christopher Geary, Khetphet Phagnasay, Yung Nguyen, Andrew Van Wilpe, Matej Strunc, Jan Hofman, Ben Bradshaw, Jordan Unachukwu, Genevieve Dunne, Sigismund Häggkvist, Rebecca Riisness, Roxane Duran, Luke Brandon Field, Justin Kirk, Ed Birch.
Our long-lasting love affair with those that walk the night is legendary in itself, even before the sense of the immaculate was born in the writing of Bram Stoker’s seminal, almost deliriously sublime, work of art in Dracula, there have been tales, whispered or captured in other forms, of the vampire, the spectre of our nightmares, and perhaps less subtly the vision of our sexual desires and outpouring of love in the darkest of places that the human heart can hope to live.
Anne Rice’s own demonic beauty that started out now over 50 years ago as she brought to characters such as Louis de Pointe du Lac and Lestat de Lioncourt to the attention of readers starved of incredibly detailed woven stories concerning erotic romance within the horror genre, may have been given the large screen treatment, but it is in the world of the television series that Interview With A Vampire has brought home the generous and expressive writing that the author won millions of fans across her career before she sadly passed on in 2021.
Unlike almost any other creation that sends chills down the spine of the reader, the vampire is one drawn from a side of humanity that deals with power, lust, a need to procreate and hunger; and it is with little wonder that the sensual nature of the television adaptation of the “Queen of Gothic” work draws the watcher in as though entertaining a thirsty voyeur, one hooked on beauty and gore, and with actors such as Jacob Anderson, Sam Reid, Assad Zaman, Eric Bogosian, and Delainey Hayles giving everything to the pulse and measure of the second season of the highly regarded Interview With A Vampire.
The second series digs deep into the lives of Louis and the young girl he sired into the vampiric world and mythos, their adoption by the theatrical group in Paris, the duplicitous nature of Armand, and the reappearance of the thought of destroyed Lestat make for sensuality on screen, simulating, suggestive as Eric Bogosian’s intense portrayal of the journalist Daniel Malloy leaves his mark as he brings the investigation of the vampires to the wider human consciousness.
With a third series being made and already aiming to bring into existence the incredible second book which progresses the life of Lestat de Lioncourt; the bond between creator, adaptor, and audience is secured; one in which the high levels of writing and production will do well to match its cunning, the brilliance, of its now illustrious predecessor.
We embrace the world of vampires as they are the closest beings that we can imagine being in the dark, all the emotions, the sense of lust in the air, and in Interview With A Vampire that darkness is greeted wildly and seductively.
Ian D. Hall