Dracula (2013)
A ten part series which re-imagines Stoker's
Dracula as he arrives in London, posing as an American entrepreneur who maintains that he wants to bring modern science to Victorian society. In reality, he hopes to wreak revenge on the people who ruined his life centuries earlier. However, his plan is complicated when he falls in love with a woman who seems to be a reincarnation of his dead wife.
I enjoyed this series, Jonathan Rhys Meyers made a fine Dracula, he even looked the part, certainly more so than any of the recognized actors playing the count for Universal or Hammer. In terms of the book the series is nothing like it. In fact it's final scene sets up the story we know and love with Van Helsing (Thomas Kretschmann) sending Jonathan Harker (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) to find and kill Dracula, so everything that goes before it is new fiction. New fiction with vigorous splashes of steamy sex and copious blood shed naturally.
So much is new and different and so much works. Van Helsing works with Dracula on a solar vaccine to allow Dracula to walk in the daylight, their partnership adds a whole new dimension to proceedings as does Dracula's relationship with Renfield - a charming hulk of a man played by Nonso Anozie - and the main plot with Dracula searching to destroy the Order of the Dragon now operating in London, the religious group responsible for the death of his wife, is wholly enjoyable as are the performances by Ben Miles who leads the order and Victoria Smurfit as Lady Jayne Wetherby, a fashionable huntswoman out to kill vampires (imagine Seline from the
Underworld films but with a heaving cleavage).
The wireless electricity technology subplot isn't as compelling as it should be and i think the Mina Murray / Lucy Westenra love triangle at times slowed things to a near standstill, however on the whole
Dracula worked rather nicely and came across as a better reinvention of classic horror characters than
Penny Dreadful's first season for example. It's a shame it wasn't taken up for a second outing.