Catching the wave of a public fascination with vampires, HBO's True Blood has steadily increased in stature to become the cable network's most popular series since The Sopranos and Sex and the City.

Based on the series of Sookie Stackhouse novels written by Charlaine Harris and starring Anna Paquin in the lead character's role, True Blood has grown its Sunday night viewership by 66 percent since its debut in September.

The first season finale airs Sunday, with a second season already in production.

Romance is centerpiece

True Blood casually imagines a world where vampires, telepathic women and "shape shifters" — people who can assume the shapes of animals — are a part of everyday life in a small Louisiana town. A steamy romance between Paquin's waitress and Bill the brooding vampire, portrayed by Stephen Moyer, stands at the show's center.

The HBO series also benefits from proximity to Friday's much-anticipated release of the Twilight movie, another spooky drama about a girl and the vampire who loves her. Another parallel: Twilight is also based on a literary series.

Alan Ball, who produced HBO's Six Feet Under, came to the network with the idea of adapting Harris' novels into escapist entertainment.

"After Six Feet Under, where as an artist and a person I got to explore my whole relationship with grief for about five years, I just felt, OK, I don't really need to spend any more time staring into the abyss," Ball said.

Ball's pitch was basically all it took to sell HBO's executives on the idea, said Michael Lombardo, HBO's chief of West Coast operations. Ball kept the foreboding darkness expected in vampire stories, spiced up the sex and violence, mixed in humor and explored the theme of outsiders in society, he said.