Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Interview With The Vampire’ Season 2 On AMC, Where Louis And Claudia Go In Search Of Fellow Vampires In Post-WWII Europe

Eighteen months ago, AMC launched a series version of Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire as the cornerstone of what they hope will become a franchise for them. It succeeded, garnering good reviews and a devoted fan base. But at the end of the first season, one of its main characters, Lestat de Lioncourt, was killed by Louis and Claudia. Then, Bailey Bass had to leave the series, and Delainey Hayles became the new Claudia. How would the show hold up in the face of those changes?

ANNE RICE’S INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: An overview of a snowy, nighttime landscape. We hear the voice of Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) talking to journalist Daniel Malloy (Eric Bogosian) about his erratic dreams as he flips through the diary of his young vampire charge Claudia (Delainey Hayles), who claims that she does not dream.

The Gist: Louis continues to tell his story to Daniel, but now sitting at the table is Armand (Assad Zaman). At first, Armand was introduced to Daniel as Louis’ butler Rashid, but it turns out that Armand is a vampire who is Louis’ longtime companion and “the love of his life” — at least since Louis and Claudia killed Lestat (Sam Reid). Armand insists that everything he says should be off the record, so Daniel disdainfully says “disregard” into his recorder every time Armand speaks up. Hanging nearby is “Real Rashid” (Bally Gill), as Daniel derisively calls him.

We pick up Daniel and Claudia’s travels in Romania, right at the end of World War II. After they killed Lestat, the pair are traveling in search of Old World vampires. Claudia wants to find other vampires to relate to, and Louis is resigned to the fact that “I no longer qualify,” as he tries as much as possible to refrain from sucking on live human blood. Though he’ll gladly chew on the heart of a dying soldier Claudia finds and finishes off.

Romania is supposed to be the heart of vampire country (it’s where Transylvania is, after all), but all the pair are finding are annoyed Russian soldiers who shoot at corpses in dug-up coffins. They meet up with a woman who takes them to a shelter where people are hiding out from, as she says “soldiers who don’t know the war is over.” Many of the people have garlic around their necks to ward off vampires, though Claudia knows that doesn’t do anything. But it gives her an indication that vampires may be nearby.

She ventures out into the woods and sees what she thinks is a vampire attacking and sucking on the blood of some soldiers. She tries to telepathically communicate with it, but it screams and attacks her instead. When she goes back to the shelter and tells Louis about it, he doesn’t want to believe her, but when someone from the shelter is bitten, the two of them go to find the thing Claudia saw.

In the meantime, Louis can’t shake Lestat. He’s constantly being taunted by visions of his former lover, with the gash in his neck Louis gave him. In the 21st century, Daniel, who is very proud of his journalistic ability to spot someone who’s lying, is trying to get the truth out of Louis, who has proven to be an unreliable narrator of his own story. It doesn’t help that he and Armand are hiding some details that Claudia wrote in her diary.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Of course, Interview With The Vampire is based on Anne Rice’s series of novels. At this point, the show’s narrative has strayed quite far from the Tom Cruise-Brad Pitt-Kirsten Dunst film version from 1994.

Our Take: The biggest story surrounding Season 2 of Interview With The Vampire was Delainey Hayles taking over the role of Claudia from Bailey Bass, who left for unspecified reasons. She acquits herself nicely here, playing a version of Claudia that’s a bit more mature and a bit more determined. She definitely seems to be leading the way in this story, and Hayles seems to be up to the task of being the character this story is mostly revolving around.

We’re wondering how the loss of Lestat is going to affect this story going forward. Yes, Sam Reid hasn’t gone away, as Louis will still see bloody visions of his former lover taunting him from the spirit world, and that will likely guide how he continues to exist as a vampire in a mortal world. But the heat between them is what drove a lot of Season 1; Louis meeting Armond at some point during this season will replace some of that passion, but we’re not sure it’ll be the same.

We’re an entire season into this story, and we’re still trying to figure out the utility of the segments with Bogosian. Sure, we love seeing Bogosian be his Bogosian-like self, snarking off and being a general asshole to Louis, Armond and “Real Rashid.” But it feels like the bits of story we get from these 21st century pieces — even the reveal of Armond — are giving us diminishing returns. Perhaps if Louis’ narration becomes even more faulty this season, or the hidden pages of Claudia’s diary reveal something extraordinary, the framing device of the interview itself is going to start to feel tired. Of course, that’s pretty ironic given the name of the series, but it is what it is.

Sex and Skin: Surprisingly, none in the first episode.

Parting Shot: Louis and Claudia arrive in Paris.

Sleeper Star: Like we said, Bogosian is playing a very proto-Bogosian role as Daniel, which is at this point the only reason why we still like watching the interview segments.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Daniel tries to crack “Real Rashid,” he mentions that he’s interviewed “four Enron vice presidents.” Yes, we know that Daniel has been in the game for decades, but that reference is now over 20 years old. He doesn’t have a more contemporary example?

Our Call: STREAM IT. Even though Lestat isn’t the dominant force in Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire, the story of Louis and Claudia is still strong enough to keep us watching.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.