I was enthralled when I first read “Interview with a Vampire,” so I’ve wondered if it could be adapted to the small screen when the bidding war started for Rice’s material.
The first two season’s of the AMC series were a triumph.
Enter season three.
Den of Geek:
AMC’s Interview with the Vampire is, hands down, one of the best adaptations in television history, a series that manages to honor the luxurious, emotionally decadent spirit of its source material even as it makes major changes to the events depicted in Anne Rice’s original novel. Full of decadent, often gleeful violence, thorny moral questions about truth and memory, and a central relationship that’s as frequently toxic as it is desperately romantic, the series’s first two seasons are an utter delight, and a powerful reminder of the great things that genre television is capable of.
It’s difficult to overstate the scope and scale of Reid’s performance here, from playing multiple versions of Lestat across various points in his human and undead life, singing all the songs himself, and running a gamut of frequently devastating emotions from overt cruelty to crippling despair. It’s a tremendous achievement, and although award bodies rarely give genre television the respect or attention it deserves when it comes time to hand out statuettes, if there were any justice, Reid would land an Emmy for this. It’s outstanding work on virtually every level, balancing rage, heartbreak, and grief alongside a fairly elaborate mental breakdown as Lestat finds himself haunted by ghosts both literal and figurative.
Open thread.