Dracula, BBC One review - horrific, and not in a good way | reviews, news & interviews
Dracula, BBC One review - horrific, and not in a good way
Dracula, BBC One review - horrific, and not in a good way
Superfluous remake of Bram Stoker's novel outstays its welcome
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“Bela Lugosi’s dead,” as Bauhaus sang, in memory of the star of 1931’s Dracula. But of course death has never been an impediment to the career of the enfanged Transylvanian blood-sucker. Filmed and televisualised almost as frequently as Sherlock Holmes, Count Dracula would doubtless join the cockroaches as the only entities to survive a thermonuclear holocaust.
Whether we needed another new TV version is at least debatable, let alone this lumbering behemoth (for BBC One) from the conjoined brains of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, comprising three 90-minute slabs over consecutive nights. Moffat and Gatiss hit big with their Conan Doyle overhaul Sherlock, which at its best was brilliantly inventive and quick-witted, while featuring a highly successful double act at its core. However, developing characterful relationships isn’t a priority in this new Dracula, with the Jonathan Harker/Mina Murray partnership, the motor of Bram Stoker’s novel, largely parked offscreen (at least for the first two episodes – I haven’t done three yet). Hogging centre stage for most of the time is the title character – it’s all about him, and he’s not going to let us forget it – so how you react to him will define your response to the series.
The job went to Danish actor Claes Bang (star of the 2017 art-world critique The Square), though whether it was sold to him as a comedy, a satire or a plain old gore fest isn’t clear. Elements of grand guignol and squirmy body horror are peppered through the action to make sure we’re still awake. For instance the opening scene zooms in on Harker after he’s escaped from Dracula’s teetering castle, and he looks like a Chernobyl survivor after a detour through Auschwitz. The moment when a fly crawls behind his eyeball is especially loathsome. Slo-mo sequences of blood-drenched artery-sucking are of course de rigueur, along with lurching semi-decomposed representatives of the “undead” and nightmarish shots of a leering skull, with tendons and blood vessels sticking out. Dracula’s gory emergence from the innards of a wolf chalks up another notch for the special effects unit.
But Bang’s Dracula strolls through all this with a sort of James Bond-like insouciance, delivering facetious throwaway lines in a south London accent (there are a lot of vampire puns along the lines of “I don’t drink… wine”, or “I have a particular gift for eliminating suspects”). His qualifications as a harbinger of eternal horror are not enhanced by a puzzling resemblance to David Walliams, with perhaps just a dash of erstwhile Bond George Lazenby (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, 1969).
The upshot is that this Dracula feels slow and ponderous and not quite sure why it’s here, perhaps for the simple reason that there’s too much time to fill (it’s as if somebody in Commissioning said “we’ve got an extra hour going spare lads, if you want it?”). Episode two, which is mostly taken up by an expanded account of how Dracula sailed to England on the doomed ship Demeter, virtually grinds to a halt altogether as the Count stands around smirking and gossiping with the crew, before devouring them.
Gatiss and Moffat seem to have been at such pains to move things around and ensure that their Dracula is “different” that sustaining a compelling narrative line has taken a back seat. Professor Van Helsing, for instance, is now Sister Agatha, a nun in Bucharest (played by Dolly Wells, pictured above, with a thick Germanic accent), while making Harker one of the undead is like making Hamlet swap places with the Ghost. Was this journey really necessary?
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Comments
‘and he looks like a
Strange you care more about
I i don't often post comments
Absolutely agree. Bloody
Stephen, You are so right!
Stephen...I feel your pain,
I couldn't agree more in
Destruction of a literary
Absolutely spot on. I am
Stephen, I've finished the
Complete rubbish I totally
I just wrote this on my FB
Disappointing and thin stuff.
well it may not follow the
I liked the BBC Dracula. What
I found this program very
Sherlock started off
I think those who want the
Or, maybe Moffat and Gatiss
I agree with the above
I had been greatly looking
Professor Abraham Van Helsing
Anti male rhetoric. How
Mildly amusing adaptation,
Don't like it. Silly,
Haha - confusing Bucharest
I'm enjoying it immensely.
Heartily relieved that I’m
They were obviously enjoying
I understand that Freddy. I’m
Have googled and found 99% of
But everybody loves it, and
If as you state... they know
Oh please..'I have a degree
A comments section is an
I don't wish to shut anyone
Yeah I agree that claiming
I hope YouTube video essayist
It’s a wonderful adaption.
I think it's a fantastic
Dracula has been done to
This review is turgid, self
It's comments like yours that
like I wrote, your review is
Are you sure you have an eng
Yes, and probably from better
What makes Dracula scary is
Watched first episode. Not
Failed to get me interested
Mr Sweeting's review is spot
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