Blade: The Series

The title character's mission in life is killing vampires, preferably by decapitating them with some fancy swordplay, so there's no getting around the violence. Guns and knives are also used. That said, when a vampire is killed, it tends to suddenly disappear into a pile of smoking, glowing ash, so there's not actually a lot of blood (which is unusual for a vampire show). The vampires must feed, but most of that occurs offscreen. Some scenes involving needles and macabre medical experiments are rather graphic.

Vampires' need to feed on blood has long been considered one of the great sexual metaphors of horror movies, and that comes through clearly in Blade. There's no onscreen nudity, and little amorous action, but some blood-sucking scenes come off as rather suggestive love scenes.

Some offensive language (including s--t), and plenty of lines that are stilted and overly dramatic.

Blade must regularly endure a painful-looking drug regimen, and some of the human characters occasionally smoke cigarettes and drink, but there's little overindulgence.

Parents need to know that since this series (which is based on the movies starring Wesley Snipes) is all about hunting down vampires, it can get pretty violent. Even when the hero isn't swinging his sword, shooting his special garlic gun, flinging silver knives, or blasting away with silver bullets, there's an undercurrent of malice. The vampires are portrayed as elegant but amoral and cast a looming sense of malevolence over every scene. Even the hero approaches his work with a sense of grim fatalism and doesn't exactly inspire the same kind of buoyant optimism as other superheroes. It's sometimes gory, more than a little creepy, and just the right kind of show to give little kids very bad dreams.