Welcome, fellow horror fans, to the first installment of Fear Zone's new monthly column, The State of the Genre, where I will regularly discuss, dissect and opinionate on any and every aspect of the horror genre, from books and movies to music and art -- you name it, I'll probably cover it. In the coming months I'll be tackling some deeper issues, but I'd like to inaugurate this column with a topic that's near and dear to my dark little heart.

Television. Namely, horror on TV. (My blog readers don't call me the TV Nerd for nothing!)

Horror has always had a home on television. There was a time, decades ago, when tales of the macabre practically ruled the airwaves: DARK SHADOWS, THE TWILIGHT ZONE, THE OUTER LIMITS, LIGHTS OUT, ONE STEP BEYOND, THRILLER -- you could even toss THE ADDAMS FAMILY and THE MUNSTERS into the mix for good measure, if you like. While those days are long gone, recent years have seen some quality horror on the airwaves (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, THE X-FILES, LOST, DEXTER), as well as some jury's-still-out programming (REAPER) and some major disappointments (MASTERS OF HORROR, FEAR ITSELF, and let's not forget the abysmal NIGHT VISIONS a few years back -- or rather, let's). Yet BUFFY and THE X-FILES went off the air years ago, and exceptional shows that are still airing, like DEXTER and LOST, only skim the surface of the genre while exploring other themes. (There's also SUPERNATURAL, a series with a strong following, but I was so turned off by the pilot episode that I never tuned in again, and so I can't really talk about it here with any expertise.)

Basic cable doesn't have much more to offer in terms of quality horror. Aside from cheesy "original" monster movies and the occasional reruns of DARK SHADOWS, KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER and TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE, the Sci-Fi Channel doesn't show as much horror as one would hope. Only a very small number of households in the U.S. have access to Monsters HD -- a channel similar to Canada's Scream in its devotion to showing all horror movies, all the time -- because it's only available on dish networks via satellite. Who knows what's going on with Fangoria TV, and don't even get me started on the Horror Channel that was supposed to appear some five years ago now and is still nothing but a website and a dream. So where is a devoted horror fan to go for a regular fix of quality thrills, chills and all-around freaky-deakiness?

Like the proverbial lost keys, it's always the last place you'd think to look.

I'm talking about HBO.

Renowned for its superb dramas like OZ, THE SOPRANOS and DEADWOOD, the premium cable channel has actually had a long flirtation with the horror genre. Its first foray into dark territories came, ironically, the same year it started showing the classic children's program FRAGGLE ROCK, 1983, with a Canadian/French/American co-production called THE HITCHHIKER. A mash-up of ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS and THE TWILIGHT ZONE, THE HITCHHIKER was an anthology series hosted by a character who was -- you guessed it -- a wandering hitchhiker, and featured such before-they-were-stars actors as Kirstie Alley, Willem Dafoe, Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton and Michael Madsen (even KISS front man Gene Simmons appeared on the show!) in often gruesome tales of betrayal and revenge. Of course, there was a healthy dose of gratuitous T&A as well, unusual even for cable at that time, which helped keep the program on the air for four years. (Half the amount of seasons of the equally gruesome, but for different reasons, ARLI$$!)

But what really put HBO on the horror map was TALES FROM THE CRYPT, a star-studded anthology series based on the classic EC comics, which premiered in 1989 and ran for seven lucrative years, spawning two (admittedly lackluster) feature films and turning its ghoulish host, the Crypt Keeper, into a household name. It also spawned a little-seen 1997 follow-up called PERVERSIONS OF SCIENCE, a science fiction/horror anthology based on EC's Weird Science comics. That same year, 1997, saw the launch of HBO's Emmy-winning, animated -- and explicitly adult -- adaptation of Todd McFarlane's horror comic Spawn . In 2001, HBO gave us SIX FEET UNDER, and though the groundbreaking series was not technically horror, it featured enough macabre humor -- not to mention ghosts (so what if they were usually only in the characters' imaginations?) -- that genre fans came rushing back every week to tune in to the trials and triumphs of the eccentric Fisher family and their funeral home.

Perhaps HBO's finest horror-related hour came in 2003 with CARNIVALE, a dense, rich, extremely dark tale of magic and miracles in the Depression-era dust bowl starring Nick Stahl and Clancy "The Kurgan" Brown. An air of supernatural mystery, an epic struggle between good and evil, reincarnation, mystical healing powers, possession, telekinesis -- CARNIVALE had a lot going for it. Unfortunately, it also had a glacial pace and a complicated mythology that made picking it up midway through difficult. As a result, the planned six-season epic was cancelled after only two. The short-lived 2007 series JOHN FROM CINCINNATI contained some horror elements as well, including terrifying visions and decomposing ghosts, but the less said about that travesty of a program the better.

Which brings us to the present, and you'll be happy to hear that HBO is still exploring the genre as much as ever. On September 7, HBO will premiere its newest series, TRUE BLOOD, helmed by SIX FEET UNDER's Alan Ball and based on Charlaine Harris' bestselling Sookie Stackhouse series about vampires in small-town Louisiana. And there's even more good news coming for horror fans. Projected for 2009 is a show based on Garth Ennis' groundbreaking horror comic Preacher , and sometime after that HBO plans to adapt George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire into a regular series (I know it's fantasy and not horror, per se, but minus the funny names and pointy ears, fantasy and horror are kissing cousins).

So, in your search for quality horror on television, who ya gonna call? While the networks continue to struggle to find worthy successors to BUFFY and THE X-FILES, HBO has been quietly amassing a body of work that would get any horror fan salivating. Who would have thought it? Sometimes what you're missing really can be found in the last place you'd look.

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When he's not glued to his television, Nicholas Kaufmann is a Bram Stoker Award-nominated author, reviewer and interviewer. For more regular doses of Kaufmannia, visit his blog at http://nick-kaufmann.livejournal.com or his website at http://www.nicholaskaufmann.com