I Watch TV: Interview With The Vampire (Season 2)
Interview With The Vampire (Season 2)
Daniel Malloy continues his interview with Louis de Pont du Lac, a 145 year-old vampire, who he met 49 years ago in San Francisco, and now "lives" in Dubai. There were two revelations at the end of Season 1; firstly that Louis and Claudia killed their creator vampire, Lestat de Lioncourt; and secondly that Rashid, Louis’s servant, is actually the Vampire Armand, his 540 year-old lover. (There’s another Rashid who Malloy refers to as real-Rashid until real-Rashid asks him not to; his service is excellent but not the perfection of Armand).
Having killed Lestat, their creator, Claudia and Louis head for Europe to try and find other vampires. In the chaos of the end of WW2 they meet some in Romania, but it goes wrong, with the senior vampire killing herself. They head for newly liberated Paris.
They spend several months in Paris, Louis becoming a photographer. The local coven, who operate out of the Théâtre des Vampires, a grand guignol theatre, wait for them to announce themselves, but they’re ignorant of the etiquette and signs, Lestat never having bothered to teach them. Eventually Armand, the coven leader, invites them to a performance, and they see the various dark plays (enhanced by the high technology of a film projector interacting with the performers.
The Paris coven was taken over by Armand, who was sent from Rome when they lost a leader. They had fallen into apathy, hiding in a cellar until Lestat turned up during the French Revolution and had them found the theatre company, hiding in plain sight. Eventually Lestat left. Now Santiago, the leading actor, chafes against Armand’s rule, and finds Claudia and Louis’s arrival a chance to take control.
Meanwhile back in the early 21st century Malloy is contacted by the Talamasca, the secret occult organisation in the Interview-verse (see The Mayfair Witches). They feed him information for mysterious reasons (in fact they intend to help Malloy publish, thinking that it’s time for some of the secrets they keep to be revealed to the mortal world).
There is a lot of jumping about in time, with the two main periods being the present day and 1940s Paris, each proceeding linearly. Yet Armand’s story jumps back, to his time in Paris pre-Louis, and they also discuss exactly what happened back in 1973. Malloy, prompted by the Talamasca, reveals some secrets and lies, which bring to an end the interview and several other things.
Those of us familiar with the novel or the film will know the tragedy to come. Lestat has survived their attack in New Orleans and has returned to Paris to seek justice. In an extraordinary sequence the Théâtre des Vampires puts on a play that is the trial, the trial of Louis and Claudia and also Claudia’s friend Madeleine, illegally transformed into a vampire by Louis to finally give Claudia a companion of her own.
Malloy finally comes into his own in this season, picking apart the stories, even as the vampires he faces attempt to hide things, sometimes from him, from each other and themselves. He’s fed information by the Talamasca but he figures a lot out on his own. The discrepancies, the lies. Sometimes the show lets you forget the truth in the gothic romance, yet it always comes back. Vampirism is a curse, immortality a long time to hold onto regrets.
Watch This: Cleverly wrought period(s) drama about vampires
trying to learn how to survive eternity, and maybe make some art
Don’t Watch This:
Lies, betrayal, blood, murder and suicide
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