First Look: Banshee

Alan Ball created one of the guiltiest pleasures with his vampire soap opera True Blood on HBO. Now he's attached his name to Banshee, a Cinemax original series that may make the premium cable channel a destination for viewing when it premieres on January 11, with its mix of Breaking Bad-meets-Sopranos. Or as Ball describes glibly: "Your typical pastoral American town with a dark, seedy underbelly of sex and violence and greed and impossible love."

Starring cutie Antony Starr (Rush), the trailer seems to promise lots of rural sexiness that will combine Amish--and skinheads. It will also include actor Hoon Lee as a crossdressing vigilante named Job (pictured).

As Ball explains: "The town of Banshee itself had just as complex a history: Mythic small-town America...original tribal lands of the Kinaho Indians...new-world home to the old-world ways of the Pennsylvania Dutch. Drug dealers. Neo-Nazi skinheads. Ukrainian gangsters. Dumb rednecks. Bad-ass Asian cross-dressers."

A Cinemax spokseperson says Job has "got a sharp tongue and a quick wit--kind of like Banshee's answer to Lafayette from True Blood... Job starts the series in dark, heavy make-up and draping dresses, but as events force him on the road he struggles with changing his look to blend in with his surroundings."

Check out the trailer below: