True Blood Creator Alan Ball to Produce Yet Another HBO Show

Whether it’s an ill-fated family of undertakers, homicidal suburbanites or the literal undead, writer/producer Alan Ball is never one to shy away from mortality.

It makes sense then that the creator of acclaimed HBO series Six Feet Under and the recently Emmy-nominated True Blood would choose that same theme for his third series for the network. According to Deadline.com, HBO greenlit an hour-long pilot for Ball’s dark comedy-drama series All Signs of Death, based on The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death, a 2009 crime novel by Charlie Huston. Huston will be writing the pilot, while Ball is set to direct and executive produce.

All Signs of Death is about a “twentysomething slacker” who ends up working as a crime-scene cleaner and gets caught up in the usual noir threads: murder mysteries, femme fatales, etc. But don’t expect Ball’s new show to look like the glossy film noirs of old. He says he wants to shoot it “cinema verité” style and has been experimenting with handheld cameras for a grittier, more realistic feel. “It’s about the dirty underbelly of LA,” Ball told Deadline. “We’re going to try to go against the grain, away from the overlit, stylized noir for a more frantic, contemporary, naturalistic style.”

Ball says he is aware of the common thread of all his HBO shows. “Obviously death is a theme I’m fascinated by,” he says in the Deadline report. Really? We hadn’t noticed.

Got news tips for Paste? Email news@pastemagazine.com.