Anyway, I've seen a few clips of TB, though I haven't seen the whole first episode. Bear in mind that these are merely based on what I've seen from clips.
First of all, I hate the title sequence. Not the song; I love that song, though, since Sookie is the main character, a song performed by a female artist would have been slightly preferable. But the visuals go over just about every Southern stereotype there is, and I personally find it somewhat offensive. We have rickety swamp shacks, closed-minded Bible-thumpers, roadkill, Coyote Ugly dancers... Ugh. And none of the cast whatsoever appears, which I could deal with if the video montage they used wasn't so horrible.
As for casting, Anna Paquin is a bit too pale to play Sookie, but I could easily have put up with, except that her accent is terrible. "Wayull, Beeyull, yoo juhst likkd awl ovurh mah hayud. Thayut's prihtee puhrsahnahl." Stephen Moyer looks the part of Bill, and his accent, though not great, is easily passable. Ryan Kwanten and Sam Trammell just don't play Jason and Sam the way I pictured them. And, God, did they ever butcher Tara. From what I've seen, her character has been reduced to a hollow stereotype. Gran is also not how I pictured her.
I find it strange that they felt a need to jack up the profanity from the books. I'm not offended by it or anything, but Dead Until Dark had two f-bombs in the whole book, whereas a two-minute clip of TrueBlood that I watched had about 15.
Anyway, those are just my thoughts based on what I've seen.