Blood Ties Comes to Lifetime

Lifetime has announced that they will start airing the series Blood Ties, based on the "Blood" novels by Tanya Huff on Sunday, March 11th at 10 pm ET/PT. It will be interesting to see how it does in the ratings. For fans of paranormal drama who don't care for Galactica, that makes for a good back to back scheduling block.

Not too much info has come out about how this series will adapt the Tanya Huff books that I've come across so far. Some details on the series can be found at The Futon Critic and on the IMDB .

Here's how they describe the series:Blood Ties follows the misadventures of Vicki Nelson, a feisty, attractive, 29-year old ex-cop turned private investigator with a degenerative eye disorder, who seems destined to sit on the sidelines until fate intervenes, turning her life upside down. After witnessing a terrifying murder, she finds herself on a collision course with a stranger who is also investigating the murder. He is Henry Fitzroy, a 450-year old vampire who just happens to be the bastard son of King Henry VIII. After solving the murder, Vicki finds her forays into supernatural crime are anything but over. Week after week, Vicki's relationship with Henry draws her into baffling cases involving a terrifying pantheon of occult adversaries. Forget fraud investigations and cheating spouses - she's squaring off against ghosts, goblins and ghouls. Vicki and Henry's unlikely alliance soon progresses beyond a purely professional arrangement, complicating her relationship with her long-suffering ex-partner in policing and love, Detective Mike Celluci… and pretty well everything else in her life.

It stars Christina Cox as Private Investigator Vickie Nelson, Kyle Schmid as vampire Henry Fitzroy, and Dylan Neal as Mike Celluci. This looks to be Cox's first starring role in a TV series for a while. She has done a lot of guest shots on shows going all the way back to Forever Knight and co-starred in FX: The Series. Schmid has done a few guest shots as well, but nothing major. Neal has the most notable credits with stints on Dawson's Creek, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and the lead role of David Martell in Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers.

Huff only wrote six books in the series, and there are some dramatic changes in Victory Nelson's life through those six books. Huff has done a sequel series, Smoke and Shadows, featuring one of the supporting characters, Tony, that has three books so far. Those are fun in that Tony works on a Canadian TV series about a vampire detective. Maybe they will eventually work that into the Blood Ties tv series down the road.

Lee