True Blood (9 p.m. Sunday, HBO) -- Scary but thoughtful, funny but bleak, full of richly layered characters and creatures with sharp fangs and claws, HBO's irresistible festival of vampires 'n' rednecks is back for a second season. Not only are we set for an epic collision between thirsty vampire tribes and a fang-hating fundamentalist Fellowship of the Sun Church, but Civil War-era vampire Bill Compton finds himself in charge of a millennial teenager who's new to bloodsucking. When the 160-year-old vampire roars to his young ward to change her clothes -- ''I will not have you looking like a slattern'' -- it gives new meaning to the term ``generation gap.''
East of Eden (11:30 p.m. Monday, Turner Classic Movies) -- When people talk about the legend of James Dean, they usually mention Rebel Without a Cause. But his portrayal of a sulky World War I adolescent in this adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel translated perfectly to 1955 teenagers, who turned him into an instant icon. Watch and see what all the fuss was about.
Hawthorne (9 p.m. Tuesday, TNT) -- Jade Pinkett Smith plays a headstrong, heroic nurse in this new drama that has the abysmal misfortune to debut a week after Edie Falco redefined the whole profession in Nurse Jackie.
The Queen and I (8 p.m. Wednesday, HBO2) -- In the late 1970s, Iranian teenager Nahid Persson Sarvestani was an energetic supporter of the Islamic revolution that toppled her country's royal family. Thirty years later, Sarvestani -- now a disillusioned filmmaker forced into exile by the repressive theocracy she helped take power -- makes a documentary about the Iranian queen she helped topple. And two women with nothing in common but a longing for the country they left become the unlikeliest of friends.
Let Miami Herald TV critic Glenn Garvin program your TiVo! Just click on his best bets for the week at www.tivo.com/guruguide.
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