True Blood.

The first episode, Strange Love, kicks off giving us a specific setting right in the outskirts of Podunk, Louisiana. Bon Temps, to be exact. Let me just get something out of my system...Anna Paquin, Day-Um! Okay, moving on. Paquin is Sookie, virginal, doe-eyed, telepathic. She has the worst kind of job considering she can hear the thoughts of those around her...she's waitress at a booze-and-burgers bar and grill. Sam, the owner, is in love with her. Tara, her opinionated, hands-on-her-hips, cut-folks-to-the-quick best friend, is in love with Sookie's brother, Jason. Jason has the looks, the physique, the sex drive, and bevy of Bon Temps ladies, but he's dumb as a stick. Nothing between the ears. Reckless, impulsive, driven by hormones and enough attention from the girls to keep his ego stroked, Jason, as the show emphasizes during the series' run, encounters trouble time and again. He has rough sex with a redhead with a rep for being a nymphomaniac, typically recording her lays for future viewing. She admits to fucking a vampire, allowing him to bite her. Vampires are out of the coffin, subsiding from humans as cattle for a Japanese synthetic blood, although few believe they are abstaining completely. She is found strangled, dead not long after some inspired sex with Jason. Sheriff Dearborne and his partner, Andy, confront Jason, and soon he's off to accompany them to the station. Lafayette, flipping burgers and sousing himself with Sam's bar tap, flirts with a portly farmer in overalls when he gets a lecture from Tara on etiquette involving ordering a drink...Don't snap your finger at her!

But besides the repellent Rattrays looking to syphon blood supply from a vampire to sell, Sookie and Jason's Gran hoping the new vampire in town will speak on the Civil War to her women's club, and Arlene, mother often talking with kids more than serving drinks, recovering from her hubby leaving her and a new relationship with a younger man; this is almost exclusively a Vampire Bill locks eyes with Sookie centered story. Their chemistry is electric. Real magnetism exists between them. Just hot sex right there as they share their space. Sookie is all mush when in his presence. His intense stare and dark, brooding aura just melt her. He is also quite astounded by her. He asks her what is she, and his developing infatuation with her is requited. When she rescues him from the Rattrays, learning a weakness of the vampire, silver that debilitates, Sookie and Bill share a secret he doesn't want out. Soon the Rattrays return to get their pound of flesh from Sookie. Will Bill come to her aid?

The hearing and reading of thoughts that Sookie endures at Marlotte's is a character arc of special importance to the series going forward. The intensity of the thoughts, collectively speaking in cacophony, is emphasizes. Reticence to approaching customers makes sense by the time Strange Love is over.