The Television Academy really needs to start a category for best ad campaigns.  HBO would undoubtedly be the perennial winner.  Take the launch of Alan Ball’s (Six Feet Under) new vampire series, True Blood, debuting this Sunday.  Billboards and buses have been sporting sexy ads for the vampire beverage, “True Blood.”  Other ads feature a sexy shot of a woman with sanguine lipstick licking a droplet of blood off her lips.

If only the series was half as intriguing.  At Thursday’s worldwide premiere in Hollywood, audiences were dished up two episodes of the series launch.

For the past month, HBO has aired a “Behind-the-Scenes” tease, featuring interviews by writer/creator and pilot director Alan Ball.  Among the secrets revealed, Ball admits to never having been a fan of the vampire genre, until he fell in love with the series of novels by Charlaine Harris.  In developing the novel into a series, Ball decided to turn the lighthearted series of Southern Vampire mysteries into a political allegory in a world where humans and vampires co-exist by the creation of the synthetic “True Blood” substitute for real blood.

What results, however, falls short a few pints shy of Anne Rice or Stephen King.  It’s clear from the get-go that Ball bit off more than he could chew here.

Puns aside (which apparently write themselves here), the series tries to succeed on so many levels, it’s difficult determine what exactly it’s trying to say.

Complicating the premise, Anna Paquin’s character, Sookie Stackhouse, is a small-town southern waitress with an ability to read people’s minds — a “telepath” who has a tough time getting orders straight at Merlotte’s bar & grill, as she listens to cliche’s spilling forth from the minds of her customers.

When in walks mysterious Bill Compton (played by Stephen Moyer), Sookie is immediately smitten (much to the demise of Merlotte’s owner, Sam (played by Sam Trammel), who’s already smitten with Sookie but lacks the confidence to tell her.  But how is poor Sam going to compete with a handsome, ever-brooding vampire (who “died” during the Civil War)?

I’ll hand this to the vampire race — they sure do hand-pick the chosen few to become immortal.  The nerdy, dorky, or overweight need not apply.  A good brood, however, goes a long way.  In True Blood, Bill Compton broods to the point you want to stand up from your seat and yell out, “Crack a smile, already!”

None of this is Compton’s fault.  Both he and Paquin try desperately to rise above the material, even when sheer common sense stands in the way.  In one scene, Sookie runs out of the bar to help out her paramour vampire, whose blood is being drained by a couple hicks aiming to sell it.  A concerned Sam runs out two seconds after Sookie to stop her…

Then we don’t see him again for a solid ten minutes, when Sookie battles the crooked couple and manages to not only save Bill but make a date with him.  When Sookie finally returns back to the bar, a concerned Sam stands out at the door.  What was he doing while his would-be girlfriend was 50 feet away fighting a royal battle with two backwoods hicks and flirting with the undead?  Maybe trying to figure out what that other HBO series was all about: John from Cincinnati.

According to the press, Ball was determined to stay away from the cliches of vampire movies and series. Not only did he fail in that quest, he seems to draw off every southern stereotype and cliche ever invented. There’s a town sheriff, played by William Sanderson, who looks like he could have done double duty in a Smokey & the Bandit sequel; Sookie’s even got a stupid but hot-looking older brother who spends the better part of the first two episodes half naked or less; as well as a sweet loving grandmother who’s always ready to offer a mint julep, fresh baked muffin, or sweet sausage whenever you see her; even Sookie’s best friend, an African American actress who seems to be channeling “Dee” from What’s Happening, is named “Tara.”

Clearly, HBO was hoping for another Six Feet Under here but ended up with something that should have been buried six feet under.  The biggest crime is how deftly the show seems to miss every opportunity at succeeding on any level…including the obvious: it’s not even scary.  The biggest crime, it seems, is how badly you want it to be better.  Even though vampires have been done for centuries, the genre itself is as everlasting as the mythical beings they portray.

Its obvious faults aside, Ball does manage to throw in a few bones to keep viewers interested.  A mystery exists regarding the death of Sookie’s parents.  It looks like we’ll find out more about what happened to Bill the Brooding Vampire back during the Civil War. Most intriguing, however, is the return of the scary-ass tattooed vampire scantily seen in a homemade sex video who finally gives the audience its first real jolt — adjacent at the end of the second episode.

There’s not enough here yet to make a meal for even the most thirsty viewer, but here’s hoping subsequent episodes start to deliver…before this hodgepodge of platitudes have you running to Showtime.

(You thought I was going to say “running for a stake in the heart,” didn’t you?  Sorry to disappoint.  Now you know how it feels watching an episode of True Blood.)