BLOOD TIES: AN INTERVIEW WITH PETER MOHAN

By Edward Gross

Anyone still mourning the passing of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, may get a shot in the jugular with Lifetime television’s new vampire series, Blood Ties.

Based on a series of novels written by Tanya Huff, the show focuses on ex-cop turned P.I. Vicki Nelson (Christina Cox), who finds herself immersed in the world of the supernatural and torn between her ex-lover and partner, Detective Mike Celluci (Dylan Neal), and vampire Henry Fitzroy (Kyle Schmid), the illegitimate son of Henry VIII. Each week finds the triumvirate involved in a mystery that reveals itself to be otherworldly.

The showrunner on Blood Ties is Peter Mohan, who has over 400 hours of television credited to him. Among the shows he’s been connected with are Mission to Mars, Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, Due South, Eerie, Indiana, Code Named Eternity, Mutant X, Relic Hunter, La Femme Nikita, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Highlander.

Vampires & Slayers will be offering a series of articles on Blood Ties, beginning with this interview with Mohan.

VAMPIRES & SLAYERS: The show seems to have a lot of potential. I just hope that it manages to connect with the Lifetime audience because it’s so different from their usual fare.

PETER MOHAN: They’re actually really thrilled. I was just talking to them today and they’re over the moon, because they see it as a big opportunity to get a new audience and get their audience to open up to other things. They’ve done a lot of testing and everybody’s thrilled. All the hardcore viewers say they loved it and other people have expressed their surprise that it’s on Lifetime, but they really do like it.

VAMPIRES & SLAYERS: You were working on the show before Lifetime picked it up. Did the network need any changes or seek a different direction because of the type of shows they usually air?

PETER MOHAN: That’s the beautiful thing about this show. Creatively, everybody has been on the same page since I first got involved with the studio who bought the rights to the novels three years ago. Everyone has gotten behind a vision of this and sees it primarily as a romantic character-driven show with these supernatural overtones. It’s funny, because the vision is actually a complex one. There are elements of straight-up cop shows, and P.I. shows and that kind of thing, too, but everybody has gone along with it and it’s become pretty special. It’s just getting better and better.

VAMPIRES & SLAYERS: How did you get involved with the project in the first place?

PETER MOHAN: I’ve got kind of a long history with it, because I’d read the novels years ago. I saw them prominently displayed at a bookstore because they’d just been published. They talked about this female P.I. working the streets of Toronto with her partner who’s a vampire. I thought, “Okay, I’m in.” I read them, liked them and thought it would be a great thing to turn into a show, but didn’t have the time or the wherewithal to do it. Suddenly these guys called me about three years ago and said, “We’ve got a show about a female P.I. who works with a vampire,” and I said, “Oh my God, you’ve got the Vicki Nelson novels. I’ve got to be involved.” We went on from there.

VAMPIRES & SLAYERS: You’ve got a penchant for the genre anyway, right?

PETER MOHAN: I do. I love sci-fi and dark fantasy and all of that kind of stuff.

VAMPIRES & SLAYERS: In your mind, what was the challenge of taking those novels and adapting them for television?

PETER MOHAN: There are only five novels, and by the fourth novel Vicki’s actually turned into a vampire. So there wasn’t a lot there in terms of a run of where the characters went before some very dramatic things happened. The great thing to take from the books was really the core relationship, which is a love triangle that is so rich. She’s this woman trying to decide what kind of love she wants; the dark or the light? The Alpha Male cop who she could have a life and children with and is the lover that makes sense, or this exotic 450 year old vampire who’s everything she shouldn’t have but is someone she still finds sexy. So she’s always driven but never gets to settle on either one of them, and that’s something you could keep churning forever.

VAMPIRES & SLAYERS: What’s interesting is that while there is a Beauty and the Beast quality to the story, unlike these other unrequited love stories, Henry isn’t exactly sitting around waiting for her to make up her mind. He’s got plenty of other women to choose from.

PETER MOHAN: That’s the funny thing about her, too. How can she commit to him when he’s going to have a different woman in his bed every other night? And for him, a woman like her happens to him once a generation, maybe, and there’s a great amount of longing very similar to a Beauty and the Beast kind of feel at various times because he can’t be everything to her that she needs him to be and he feels that loss and lack.

VAMPIRES & SLAYERS: Not to be crass here, but is this a fiscally challenged show? It doesn’t feel like a giant budget and I wonder if it’s a tough show to produce.

PETER MOHAN: It is very tough to do. The budget is very… miniscule. But the thing is, it’s not a show that essentially lives on its visual effects. Although once you see them in their complete form, they do look pretty great, but it’s a show that lives on those relationships and that’s what the show’s strength is, I think. We have great actors who give great, solid performances.

VAMPIRES & SLAYERS: Which works, because you’re always better off if you let your show work on those levels rather than the effects anyway.

PETER MOHAN: When you look at how far the stakes have been upped in that game with all of the feature films and how, on the other side, devalued effects have become because of how easy they are to do; when most of the kids at home with a Mac can do the effects they see, you recognize the importance of character and story.

VAMPIRES & SLAYERS: Is there anything particularly intriguing to you about the vampire genre?

PETER MOHAN: I’ve always loved vampires, but I don’t know quite what it is about them that I like. I guess it’s the unknown thing creeping around in the night. There’s also the classical vampire concept, the infection aspect of it of taking one over and turning them into a night creature. There’s a great shiver you get from that. In some ways, this definitely skews more toward the dark fantasy conception of vampires where something is done as a choice and it’s something that does not turn you into a monster. The vampires are actually much more human than many of the humans they run into on the show.

VAMPIRES & SLAYERS: What’s amazing is that if you read the trades on a regular basis, you find that every couple of days there seems to be a new vampire project announced.

PETER MOHAN: It’s amazing! When we started this, we saw this show as filling a great void. Now there are several shows in development and films. From what I’ve heard, a lot of these are quality projects and character-based. Blood Ties is really investigating the issues of what it is to be a vampire and how that differentiates from humanity. What it’s like to live off of other people and does one see oneself as a monster? What is it like to live through history and what’s that perspective? In very much the same way as it was in Highlander, the people that you love grow old and die. Do you turn them or not turn them? An interesting aspect of our mythology on the show is that after you turn someone, you can’t be with them anymore because this vampire territorial instinct steps in. So the moment you do try to gain that immortal love with somebody, the time clock is already ticking on it because you’re going to be mortal enemies in a year. You’ve got to assume that by season four or something, Vicki is going to be a vampire and that will be coming towards the end of her and Henry. That’s actually dealt with in a great episode with the woman who turned Henry many years ago. She comes to him in need and he helps her out, but Henry is kind of being used. Just watching them trying to fight down their instincts to kill and also their instincts to screw is interesting, as is the opportunity to get inside the headspace of the vampires.

VAMPIRES & SLAYERS: How would you say the show has evolved from where you began to where you are now?

PETER MOHAN: It started with what we had from the novels to a large extent, and now the characters have their own life and their own way of interacting with each other. You can see things like the fact that Mike didn’t know about Henry and then he knows and from there he’s suddenly half on the team, but he can never be fully on the team, really. And the relationships are getting very complicated, because with both of these Alpha Males, what’s in it for them to keep banging on a door with no real commitment from Vicki? There’s not a commitment that she wants to give or can give emotionally at this time, because she’s got these demons watching her, she doesn’t know where she’s going to be, she’s got her own core issues she’s battling. So each of them are striking out in their own ways, but still drawn to her and committed to her and tied to her. Henry especially, since he’s a target as well. So they’re bound in hundreds of ways, but also kind of moving in their own directions and developing. And of course as the men pull away from her, that’s when she has to make her own decisions on how far she has to commit to get what she needs and to figure out what she actually needs. It’s quite fascinating seeing everyone turn towards the end of the season here.

VAMPIRES & SLAYERS: Truthfully, if you don’t keep the show in evolution, you’re dead in the water anyway. It’s not like the old days where you can press the reset button at the end of the hour.

PETER MOHAN: The stakes are so upped by the current shows. The old style episodic series play to a certain extent, but serialized shows connect much more strongly. I showed the pilot to a friend of my daughter’s and she said, “Well, who’s the Big Bad?” I said, “You like shows with the Big Bad? Do you like serialized shows as opposed to episodic?” And she said, “I’ll watch the episodic shows because I like them, but the serialized shows I’ll watch because I have to.” Not that the show is overly serialized, it’s just the emotional aspect of it. I think if there isn’t that core that moves along and changes, it’s just the monster of the week and that kind of gets old fast.

Comments

[laurel]

I am a serious fan of Blood Ties. It has offered exactly the kind of story line I have been looking for. The first 12 episodes were wonderful and are now residing on my i-pod where I can access them whenever I need a break from the ordinary. I loved the books and have been very pleasantly surprised by the way Mohan crew has taken them into the real world and made them well rounded characters. The actors selected for this series are above and beyond - in the best possible way. I especially like the humanity of the individual characters - including "Norman."
Chrisina Cox, Kyle Schmid and Dylan Neal have captured just the right tone, and definately play well together. I can hardly wait to see the next 10 episodes!
Btw - There had better be more on the way, because 22 episodes will never be enough for the worldwide fan base this is about to generate.
Don't miss this one!

[Tanya]

Blood Ties is an incredible show. It's so great to see something that focuses on characters instead of just effects. And the sexual tension between Vicky and the men is such a strong part of the show. Every week I watch and hope she'll kiss Henry and have a tender moment with him instead of always turning him away. And there definitely has to be more episodes - I definitely crave my weekly dose of the supernatural!