It is rare for a TV show in the current environment featuring such now cliché tropes as vampires and an epidemic of the living dead to surprise its audiences, but The Strain is undoubtedly an example of such a surprise. Part conspiracy thriller, part outbreak saga, and part homage to genre classics, it tells the story of an outbreak of the supposedly real creatures behind the cultural mythology of vampires. The self-referential nature of this work, something not uncommon with fiction featuring vampires and zombies, is nonetheless a key interpretive lens through which to view its uniqueness. The Strain manages to present something unique in an overpopulated genre, while nonetheless maintaining strong connections to the very best genre material, from Bram Stoker himself to Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend (1954).