Move over Howard Stern because besides being the King
of Vampires, Count Dracula may very well be the true King of all Media. The
vampire has appeared in more films than nearly every other fictional character
(second only to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes) and has gained mythic
status which goes far beyond the original 1897 novel written by Bram Stoker.
The name Dracula has become synonymous with nearly all vampires and every
fictional bloodsucker is held up against his blood-red-lined cape in comparison.
The latest iteration of the vampire count to take the
world by storm and breathe new life into his undead being is the BBC miniseries;
the brainchild of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, the head-writers and creative
team behind that other juggernaut which sought to reinvent a beloved figure of
Victorian literature, Sherlock. That series, which started life as an
homage to the original stories, sadly devolved into self-congratulatory
mini-movies which highlighted not the works of Doyle, but the cleverness of the
Moffat and Gatiss writing duo. Those same characteristics are spread across the
three episodes of their Dracula miniseries and are its ultimate undoing.
I admit that my reverence for the Dracula story and
characters may have initially colored by impression of this series, but I hoped
for the best, championing Moffat and Gatiss to deliver like they did with those
early episodes of Sherlock. Instead, Dracula emerges as a series
which cannot make up its mind whether it wishes to be an honest-to-goodness
horror series or a tongue-in-cheek deconstruction of the character. One minute,
the crew of a doomed ship are prepared to lynch a helpless nun, and the next
Claes Bang’s Count is spewing ill-time quips (and blood). The result is a
jarringly uneven tone across the series’ three episodes and do nothing but
elicit the most uncomfortable of reactions from the audience.
The writing also undoes the plot throughout. In their
effort to portray Count Dracula as a witty bon vivant from beyond the
grave, they craft a characterization that is nearly identical to that of their
modern-day Moriarty in Sherlock. Like Andrew Scott in the earlier show,
Claes Bang delivers the lines with relish and is constantly watchable, but it
feels oh so wrong for the character and simply screams of the writers’ knowing looks
and winks to the audience. The quips are hardly the weakest element of the
script, however. Plot lines that originated in Moffat’s earlier Doctor Who
scripts are recycled in their entirety, and even the third episode’s narrative
conceit of (literally) bringing Dracula into the modern world feels like it was
nabbed from the writers’ earlier works.
Despite the weaknesses of the scripts, the cast and
crew of Dracula acquit themselves admirably. Though you could never
accuse Claes Bang’s Dracula of being a faithful representation of the Stoker
original, as mentioned above, he is constantly watchable in this series and it
is clear that he, at least, is having a blast. The real highlight, however, is
Dolly Wells as Sister Agatha, the nun who commits herself to destroying Dracula.
The revelation that she is, in fact, the series’ own iteration of the Van
Helsing character was a genuine surprise, and Wells’ performance never made the
gender-swap feel like a gimmick and got this most ornery of Dracula enthusiasts
on board with the change immediately.
As usual for a BBC series, production values were
stellar; the recreation of nineteenth-century Romania, in particular, was beautifully
executed and nicely mixed a modern sensibility with a visual aesthetic clearly
culled from the Hammer Gothic Horror tradition. Visuals effects were also quite
good – especially for a series of TV films – and the level of gore was surprisingly
high, achieved in what one must assume were practical effects. Dracula’s metamorphosis
from wolf to human being was startlingly effective and put one in mind of the
kind of stunning visual trickery on display in a seminal horror classic like
John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982).
In total, clocking in at four and a half hours, this
is certainly the most epic version of Dracula that has ever been done,
yet the great potential was never reached. Undercut by its writing that is
certainly too clever for its own good, Dracula is as a well-acted and
well-produced series of half-baked ideas, jumbled tones, and attempts to
reinvent Stoker which ultimately fall flat. Total fidelity to the novel is not
and never has been a hallmark of an excellent piece of Dracula media,
but throughout this series, I could not help but think that Moffat and Gatiss
simply missed the point of the original. And certainly, you meddle with the
King of Vampires at your own risk.
