“The Lair” May Finally Be Worth Visiting

Let me say up front that I’ve always found the here! TV soap opera Dante’s Cove to be pretty much unwatchable. If the point is to see undressed pretty people enacting out incomprehensible plots, why not just go direct to adult movies?

Let me also say upfront I’m also very tired of vampires, which I thought became overdone around the time of Lost Boys in 1987.

But I’ve always had a soft spot for at least the idea of The Lair, here! TV’s show about a coven of gay vampires, their gay vampire sex club, and the mortal reporter who investigates all of this.

I think the central concept is flat-out brilliant. Anne Rice (and many others) have been writing about vampires as some kind of coded “metaphor” for gay people for decades. So why the hell not just come out and make the damn vampires gay? It’s the story that’s been begging to be told for as long as vampire homoeroticism has existed.

Like Dante’s Cove, the first two seasons of The Lair suffered from sometimes shockingly low production values and wooden acting. It’s more akin to micro-budgeted gay indie filmmaking than anything you see on TV, especially on a premium channel like here! TV.

But the show’s 13-episide third season debuts Friday, September 4^th, and at least the first four episodes (made available for preview by the network) are far and away the best yet.

The production values and acting, while improved, are still sometimes spotty. But frankly, I think the writing is often better than soaps with much bigger budgets – CBS’s As the World Turns, for example.

For one thing, the show has lightened up on the earnestness, taking itself less seriously and adding some well-needed humor.

“A gay vampire sex club after sunrise is the loneliest place on earth,” one character says at one point.

Peter Stickles as the vampire "Damian"