True Blood and Twilight become The Vampire Diaries?

The latest in a series of vampire spinoffs, with as many frenzied fans, The Vampire Diaries television series takes a knock at Twilight while carving out its own audience. In an early episode, bad boy vampire Damon Salvatore (Ian Somerholder), pages through one of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight novels and comments “this book has it all wrong”. The character goes on to mock the sparkling vampires by saying “I live in the real world, where vampires burn in the sun.”

Based on the book series of the same name, The Vampire Diaries attempts to reintroduce audiences to real vampires, hot on the heels of True Blood. While distinguishing itself as more dramatic and supernatural-horror, the books and television series still manage to fall perfectly into the lap of the “vampire craze”.

The series centres largely around three teens, two vampires and a mortal girl. Seventeen year-old Elena Gilbert (Nina Dobrev), was an ordinary girl until sensitive and tormented vampire Stefan Salvatore (Paul Wesley) walked into Robert E. Lee High School. Determined to make him hers, she creates a love triangle between herself Stefan and his unapologetic and devilish brother Damon. Her indecision surrounding which brother to choose propels the plot, and may cost her her life.

Like others in Forbes vamp mania survey, The Vampire Diaries see a group of teenagers get mixed up with a group of vampires of similar anatomical age. Although it follows much of the same formula as the others, it was not received as well. Despite it’s sharper humour and it received much criticism because of its average response, yet even then it managed to reach CW’s biggest series premier viewing – 4.9 million viewers.

The show continues to average twice the audience of CW’s other teen hit Gossip Girl. Owing its success to Twilight, stars Nina Dobrev, Paul Wesley and Ian Somerholder attributed the success of the show to Meyer’s debut novel series in an interview to Nylon magazine.