Could The Vampire Lestat be the most ridiculous piece of television you see all year?

The Vampire Lestat ★★★★

Could The Vampire Lestat be the most ridiculous piece of television you see all year? Quite possibly. What about the horniest, bloodiest and campiest? Yes, yes and yes!

Arriving like a psychedelic trip, this sequel to Interview with the Vampire is essentially the third season of that series but is very much its own beast. Set in 2025, it’s the autobiography of Lestat de Lioncourt – played with delicious abandon by Australian Sam Reid – the 265-year-old French vampire who has been remade into a rock god. Lestat is bitter over his portrayal as a “mayonnaise villain with sociopathic tendencies” in the just-published book Interview with the Vampire (it’s meta piled on meta).

He has channelled into music his fury and newfound notoriety over the book – as well as his despair at Louis (Jacob Anderson), his vampire lover from the first two seasons who told his story to Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian), who then turned it into the book. He is posing as a “bricklaying karaoke fanatic” who is pretending to be Lestat, while he actually is Lestat. As a result, the series is a mix of backstage concert video – a bloodthirsty Spinal Tap – and cry for attention.

Confused? If the answer is yes, you have two options: go back to the start of Interview with the Vampire and get the story straight; or you can just go with it. The show is a fever dream designed to destabilise and keep you off balance while wanting more, more, more.

Episodes flip back and forth between the past, present and future, dreams and catastrophes. Reid narrates the season – the accent is generously French – which starts at an auction of Lestat’s belongings: the complete works of the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt, which includes a “singular vinyl pressing” of the recording that spawned “consequential global catastrophes” that sprung from Lestat’s 2025 album and subsequent world tour.

Is Lestat alive or undead-dead in this mysterious future? We don’t know: time is irrelevant in this crazy vampire world! But what we do know – well, as much as the three episodes for review tell us – is that something is coming. We also know Lestat still has mummy issues (hello, Jennifer Ehle), that there are some regional vampires looking to cause trouble, and that Lestat and Louis’ attraction is still strong.

Reid, who is best known to Australian audiences from the ABC’s terrific drama The Newsreader, is magnetic as Lestat, all crazy eyes and body glitter, with the camp dial turned all the way up.

He is also deeply, deeply funny. We saw snippets of it in The Newsreader – no one was as awkward as Dale Jennings – but he really revels in it here, finding all the angles of Lestat’s moodiness and disillusionment with the modern world. Lestat’s outrage in a bookshop, over being asked if he wants to become a member, is a scream (and deeply relatable), as is his annoyance at a child asking for treats he isn’t allergic to.

On stage, Reid is Jim Morrison reincarnated (Anne Rice apparently modelled Lestat on the Doors frontman for her 1985 book) – or an R-rated Harry Styles – as he writhes in his tight pants and moves his hips in, well, interesting ways. It’s an all-in performance – Reid also sings all the original songs throughout – but it works completely because everyone is in awe of Lestat. He is a carnal beast, driven by desire. He does what everyone wishes they could.

There’s a reason vampires have persisted this long in popular culture and, judging by Reid’s ardent fans – who lined up for hours to seem him perform live in concert in New York in character as Lestat (you can see the concert on SBS On Demand) – that popularity won’t be dying down any time soon.

The Vampire Lestat streams on SBS On Demand.

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