Why are there so many vampires around at the moment? I haven’t actually had any knocking on my window late at night asking to be invited in for a bit of blood sucking but they do seem to be everywhere else.

At the cinema we have Twilight (moody teenagers with the extra trauma of vampirism lumped on top of their usual hormonal excesses). On TV we have True Blood (vampires from the deep South of the USA talking in the best hicksville accents and having lots of raunchy almost pornstyle sex whilst tripping out on imaginary drugs). And best of all on UK TV we have Being Human which on the face of it seems to be about three friends sharing a house. All very domesticated and normal until you realise that one of them is a ghost, one a vampire and the other a werewolf.

They go about their days working in hospitals, making cups of tea, cleaning their house and listening to CDs and watching DVDs. But the vampire is on the wagon (i.e. doesn’t drink any more – get it?). The werewolf transforms into a beautiful CGI monster once a month. The transformation sequence lovingly rips off the original masterpiece transformation sequence to top all transformation sequences from the 1981 film “An American Werewolf in London”. And the ghost no-doubt wishes that she was wearing something a little more glamourous when she died than the grey jog bottoms and T-Shirt she is now stuck with for all eternity.

Being Human is as dark as True Blood, drips gore in equivalent quantities, and is only slightly less graphic in its carnal overtures – but it wins hands down in the humour stakes (no pun intended). It flits between dark humour, laugh out loud humour, and the deep emotional entanglements of its characters. This drama explores the agonies of friendships and love affairs but with the added complication that said friend or lover could in fact be a ravening monster.

When I was younger you always knew where you were with vampires. They couldn’t come out in the daylight. You could kill them with stakes, garlic and holy water. Crosses would always scare them away. And they always had long black cloaks, high foreheads and swept back black hair.

Now it’s much more compicated. In Being Human they can handle the daylight with sunglasses whereas they still spontaneously combust in True Blood when sunlight strikes skin. Crosses no longer seem to work at all and most modern vampires are obviously not concerned about garlic at all. Infact they seem to be very happy cooking and eating it by the pan full. Vampires these days must come with an operating manual personalised to the genre that it is born into.

These TV shows are well worth checking out. In fact vampires seem to be getting so much airtime on popular TV at the moment that I wonder how long it will be before they turn up in a soap opera. Come to think of it when was the last time that Coronation Street’s was seen in daylight?