Pleasant curio

This short-lived series was an attempt to bring the Vampire The Masquerade RPG to the telly, so a different, yet highly syncretic take on the vampire mythos.

This one is not teenage girl heart-throb, angsty disco sucker, and no effete Cruise & Pitt. Although all three could be Clan Toreador.

The main focus here is the Prince of San Francisco, who is basically an arbiter between the clans, as no older, more powerful kindred wants the hassle of the charge, and his efforts to uphold the Masquerade (tm), ie: the continuous effort of vampires to hide in plain sight, as an aware and united mankind could very possibly be an existential threat.

On the plus side, the script is honestly decent, if somewhat lazy in its use of clan tropes, but still pleasant enough.

On the minus side, it is cheaply made. Very cheaply. Clan Toreador is fittingly alluring, Clan Ventrue dignified, and so on, because it's rather easy to find good-looking actors.
The Nosferatu are appalling. They personify the horror of the beast within, the uncontrollable, raging animal instinct. They're ... bald.

Same goes for visual effects. They're bad, even for the 90s. Shape-shifting is awful. Any werewolf movie did it better. Heck, even the abysmal Manimal series did it better 15 years prior.
And yeah, everyone can shape-shift into a wolf for some reason. I mean, who wouldn't want to turn into a 60-pounds canine who can't speak, use a gun or operate door handles?


Also, the script plays fast and loose with the rules, but hey, telly is not TTRPG, so one has to adapt.


All in all, it's short and rather nice, and quite possibly very accessible to a non-player.