I'm a sucker for a good monster movie or TV series, get it? See what I did there? Vampire jokes, gosh tough crowd. Well, it seems we've finally moved past how Twilight and teen drama shows bastardised the concept of Vampires, and we're getting back to the good old source material that many of us know and love.
Dracula is a television series developed by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, based on the novel of the same name by Bram Stoker. The series was broadcast and released on BBC One but is now on Netflix where I had the chance to check it out; it's only three episodes, so I thought what the hell, let's go full-tilt and binge this one.
Image source: - heavenofhorror.com
The show begins in 1897 Transylvania, where the blood-drinking Count draws his plans against Victorian London as he seeks to extend his life, teach, horror and explore the tasty treats of the new world and all the skills he can acquire from a life in a more sophisticated part of the world.
Dracula hires a lawyer in Jonathan Harker who travels to Transylvania to meet a new client and finalise the sale of a stately house in London but finds himself trapped in a terrifying maze-like castle of undead brides with a vampire Count whose ambition is to conquer the world.
Jonathan finds refuge in a convent where one of the Nuns, Agatha Van Helsing, tries to help rid the world of this evil.
Trailer for Dracula
The first episode starts very strong because it draws mainly from Bram Stoker's fantastic story. Dracula is played very well. The two main actors Claes Bang along with a strong performance by Dolly Wells as Sister Agatha, make the roles their own and that stops the show spiralling completely.
There are some questionable character motivations in the first episode but overall solidly scary and entertaining.
Then we move on to the boat episode which had a different take but took the best part of episode one and focused on playing off on Agatha versus Dracula which they did nicely, with good supporting characters and more of that Gothic horror goodness that we had with the old castle setting.
The ending, however, is where the show starts to lose the plot dragging us towards his beloved 21st Century plot lines.
Episode 3 dials the campy humour up so high that it features a net-surfing, emailing, Emoji-using Dracula swiping people on Tinder. It's not scary; it's just silly. At no point does Dracula seem to be 500 years old, because he talks like an American teenager and loses all his appeal as a dark villain.
If the turn wasn't bad enough, we're finished off with a bizarre twist that Dracula isn't that bad and is an alright guy (despite killing babies, murdering nuns and turning people into zombie slaves).
The show looks great, the pacing is good, the acting is decent, but there are too many plot holes to count that will leave you frustrated and annoyed with the scriptwriters' choices.
The show started with so much promise, and the first episode is excellent. The second episode begins to take too many liberties with the source material but is still wildly entertaining as a murder mystery. While by the third the show is almost unrecognisable as even part of the same series.
I can't remember a series which nosedived so rapidly nor what the director was thinking ruining a show with so much going for it with a crappy ending like that. If I could rank them separately, I'd say the first two episodes get an eight and the final episode gets a 5, so overall we'll score it 6.5 fangs out of 10
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