This Unlikely Vampire TV Show on Prime Is the Closest We Have to The Masquerade
It doesn’t look like VtM is getting a proper adaptation any time this century, so might as well opt for the second best choice.
Since good folks way back in the day began finding dug-out graves with missing bodies and encountering people with photophobia, the tales of vampires have been ever-present in our civilization. Even today, when we don’t believe in monsters anymore, those bloodsucking parasites found a cheeky way to stay a major part of our culture: by becoming more modern, sleek, and dangerous than ever.
World of Darkness Made Vampires Great Again
While a relatively niche franchise, it was World of Darkness that largely rebooted our vision of vampires thanks to its “subdivision,” Vampire: the Masquerade. VtM brings together everything we’ve learned (made up) about those nocturnal creatures throughout the centuries and frames it in a nice and scary concept: the bloodsuckers are ancient, immensely powerful, and still very much present.
In VtM, vampires rule the night and have human cities as their domains, pulling the strings of mortal affairs as they please. They are hellbent on keeping their existence a secret, but that doesn’t mean they refrain from feeding on humans; that means the bodies are rarely found, and careless vampires are destroyed by their own.
We could sit here singing songs of praise to Vampire: the Masquerade all night, but let’s be honest — this franchise is probably never getting a proper big-budget adaptation as a movie or a TV show. However, we know just how to scratch that itch.
Ancient Vampires Mingling in Mortal Affairs, You Say?
We’ll say four words and ask you to not immediately close the page. Deal? Deal.
Remember The Vampire Diaries?
We won’t be watching that, don’t you worry. We know just how sensitive Masquerade fans can be when it comes to the more mainstream depictions of bloodsuckers — so instead, we’re offering you to take a look at The Diaries’ spin-off. It’s called The Originals and trust us when we say it: it’s very different from its mother show.
Set in New Orleans, The Originals follows a powerful vampire clan who built the city back in the day but was forced out due to courtly intrigues. Decades later, they return to find the unstable balance between the city’s vampires, werewolves, and witches in jeopardy, and their position of power usurped. But they want it back — now.
This sounds an awful lot like Vampire: the Masquerade, doesn’t it? Powerful ancient vampires pulling the strings in the world of mortals, clans clashing with each other, different supernatural species struggling to co-exist, and above all — political intrigues… We’re very much not getting a VtM TV show, but The Originals is the second best option. Pinky promise. Just give it a go.