Dracula Drains In Third Act

The BBC and Netflix Almost Had A Winner

I was excited to see that the story of Dracula was going to be getting its own series on Netflix. I became less excited whenever I heard that Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat were involved. While I’m fully aware that both of these men worked on highly successful runs of Doctor Who and Sherlock, I’m also aware that they have a tendency to run out of ideas, reuse old ones, and ultimately fall flat by the end of their runs. I personally witnessed Moffat run Doctor Who into the ground and cheered along with other Whovians when he announced his exit. I prayed that Dracula wouldn’t meet the same fate as the good Doctor.

The BBC gave the mini-series the green light and released the final product on both BBC One and on Netflix. As I suspected, the mini-series had two solid episodes and one terrible one.

The first episode, The Rules of the Beast, was told from the perspective of an undead Jonathan Harker (John Heffernan). He recounts his tale to a nun, Sister Agatha Van Helsing (Dolly Wells), who also happens to be an atheist (that bit gets explained during the episode). She asks him numerous questions, many of which are extremely personal, in order to get an idea of who exactly Count Dracula is and what he is attempting to achieve.

She then has to square off against the count himself. Played with buckets of scene-chewing (or perhaps that should be scene-draining) charisma by Claes Bang, the count tricks his way into the convent and battles the nuns, all of whom have been trained by Sister Van Helsing to protect themselves and defeat the count.

The episode has some genuinely scary moments. During Harker’s exploration of Castle Dracula, a sense of claustrophobia invaded my mind as he walked deeper and deeper into the dark recesses of the castle. The viewer never knows what might turn up at any time. The episode also recalls a few classic episodes of Doctor Who, particularly Tooth & Claw, in my opinion and also references the classic Hammer Productions film, Dracula/Horror of Dracula (1958) that starred Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. In fact, there’s one scene in which Bang’s count looks exactly like Lee’s count as he drinks his fill of a victim.

The second episode, Blood Vessel, expands upon Dracula’s trip across the sea to England. In the book, this particular story is covered in just a few pages. Moffat and Gatiss expand the trip to a full ninety-minute episode. It works quite well, in my opinion, as it develops members of the Demeter’s crew and puts a Sherlock-like spin on the reasoning behind all of the crew members’ and passengers’ reasons for being on the vessel.

This episode plays out more like a murder mystery than a true horror story as the crew attempt to uncover the identity of the murderer on the ship. Sister Agatha shows up in the story eventually, and she teams up with the remaining crew and passengers in order to snuff out the count.

I’ve read reviews that said that this episode was entirely too long and that too much focus was placed on the crew and passengers of the Demeter. I personally enjoyed how Gatiss and Moffat fleshed out this particular part of the tale. Oh, and be on the lookout for a certain Russian scientist from Season 3 of Stranger Things as a member of the crew!

As brilliant and fun as the first two episodes were, things start to derail at the end of Episode 2 with a teaser for the final installment in the mini-series. Without explaining anything, let’s just say that Count Dracula finds himself stranded in England in the year 2020. Yep, that’s right. There’s a massive time jump in the series. Things do not go well….at all.

Dracula finds himself at the mercy of the Jonathan Harker Foundation in the third and final episode of Dracula entitled The Dark Compass. Gone are the Gothic horror elements and mystery, replaced instead by a self-centered society that puts everything on social media and tries to “live its best life” in front of anyone willing to look at it.

In the episode, Dolly Wells takes on the role of Dr. Zoe Van Helsing, great great niece of Sister Agatha Van Helsing. She heads up the aforementioned Jonathan Harker Foundation who captures Dracula and locks him away to study him and his blood. She happens to be dying from cancer and is hopeful that Dracula’s blood could lead to a possible cure. Along for the ride are Lydia West as Lucy Westenra and two of her suitors from the original Bram Stoker tale, Jack Seward (Matthew Beard) and Quincy Morris (Phil Dunster). There’s no mention of Arthur Holmwood, although Zev, Lucy’s best friend portrayed by John McCrea in the series, might have been designed with Holmwood in mind.

Sister Agatha does eventually show up (although not in the way you might think) and she continues her quest to find out exactly what makes Count Dracula tick. Along with Zoe, she eventually discovers what it is that Dracula fears the most…and it’s pretty lame. The reasoning behind Count Dracula becoming enamored with Lucy is also extremely lame. It also reveals just how shallow modern society has become. Everything is tied up with a very convenient bow at the end of the episode and while things might not look to good for everybody’s favorite bloodsucker, I wouldn’t count hims out just yet!

Bang does a great job as Count Dracula. It’s sad that the third act is so terrible, as I would love to see Bang receive a better swansong. Perhaps Gatiss and Moffat will explore more of the Count’s life prior to meeting Jonathan Harker in a later series. Dolly Wells is extremely likeable as Sister Agatha, but her performance as Zoe is greatly hindered by poor writing and direction. There are a few moments of brilliance in the final episode, particularly whenever Count Dracula teaches Lucy about the children of the night. Speaking of those children, fans of the classic Bela Lugosi film from 1931 will be glad to hear a couple of quotes from that film and even a couple of shots done in homage (at least to my eyes) to the legendary film.

Two great episodes out of three isn’t all that bad. I highly recommend watching the first two installments of this mini-series, but viewing the third one is entirely up to you. I didn’t like it very much, and in my opinion it doesn’t add anything new to the Dracula mythos.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be posting about upcoming conventions in the near future AND I’ll also get everyone up to speed on this weekend’s upcoming Hurricane Pro Wrestling Queens of the Ring 2 event!