True Blood

This one comes from Charlaine Harris's novels, turned here into a proper tangle of horror, romance and drama that refuses to sit still in one genre. It has the fangs and the shadowed nights you'd expect of anything vampire, but there is real tenderness tucked into the darkness too, the sort of messy, complicated affection horror doesn't often bother with.

The frights here build slowly rather than jumping out at you. It is dread that gathers over an evening, the sense that something old and hungry is always close by, with enough proper gore stitched in when the story wants it. It never quite lets you relax into the romance either.

It suits anyone who likes their horror with a pulse in it, who doesn't mind half falling for the very thing meant to unsettle them. This isn't a one-night watch. Save it for a run of dark evenings, curtains drawn, something warm on the go, and let it stretch out properly.