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I agree that they went for that sort of scenery chewing panto villain thing this time around (which I loved personally, the actor just owned the screen, thought while watching it he could be a shout for the next Bond before googling him finding out he's almost as old as Craig) but I think the one type of villain comment is a little unfair.
Sherlock for example had Toby Jones' weasley, slimy, chirpy northern serial killer and Lars Mikkleson's chilling creepy Murdoch figure. Doctor Who had that war mongering cult leader woman with the eyepatch in the Matt Smith run, the weird monotone cyborg from Peter Capaldi's first episode, Jenna Coleman's icy terrorist in the double episode, David Suchet's weird sheltered little boy landlord, etc. And that's just some of the original human villains Moffatt came up with. They also wrote all the old returning ones really well and differentiated between them. And he created the weeping angels which are a brilliant force of nature type monster.
They can write more than one villain is the point I'm trying to make. I do agree that you can class the Master, Moriarty and now Dracula into the same sort of archetype. But that's definitely not the only sort of bad guy they can do imo.
Another little thing I thought was very, very clever: how they used him absorbing knowledge/culture/etc from the blood of his victims to explain how he got the fear of the cross/religion. Not sure if that was in the original source but I thought that was a genius little touch, made perfect sense that he'd fear religion since he's been drinking the blood of God fearing peasants since what were essentially the dark ages, and a nice subversion of the standard "the power of christ can beat him" idea that they seemed to have been setting up.
I think that regardless of the faithfulness to the source material they needed to go all in: either make a bona fide parody or proper horror. They achieved neither. Same with setting actually : you either make a proper period piece or not. If you have your story set in two very different centuries and there's no tonal or cultural differences between the two, when your 19th century characters are modern and your nun ludicrously modern, you end up with an accidental farce. And it doesn't make your story modern or up to date or relevant to today's sensibilities. It turns it into a bloody mess and a cynical, cheap attempt to cash in a beloved horror icon.
See I disagree on both those points. I think you can have humour while still being horror. Some of the best horror films have been fun and self aware. I guess it depends what kind of horror you're going for to be fair, obviously if you want to do something properly psychologically disturbing you can't include loads of gags as they did with this. But I think for what this was (fun gory slasher style horror) you can have jokes and self awareness without becoming a full on parody.
The third episode was definitely the weakest but I didn't mind the change in setting either. If they're already deviating from the source, may as well go all out and deliver a properly mental twist like that, that's the way I see it.
Glad they kept it a surprise too. What could have been the best twist/cliffhanger of Moffat's Doctor Who, the John Simm reveal in Peter Capaldi's last one, was spoilt by the BBC advertising it in advance. At least they've learned from their mistakes on that front.
Guess I just didn't see it as a full on comedy. There were one liners, moments of pitch black comedy (like Robbie Williams blaring as the still conscious dead girl was cremated*), and Dracula himself was a big, colourful villain, but I still saw the story at its heart a fairly straight/serious one. Silva in SF for example was also a camp, colourful villain, but that's probably one of the more serious Bond films. I guess this wasn't as straight faced as that but you get my point. I wouldn't class it as a comedy.
I thought he was still menacing underneath the charisma and flourishes. That jump scare on the boat for example really got me. And he did plenty of horrific stuff to remind us of how dangerous he was underneath the panto bad guy act. A bad guy that delights and enjoys being evil is still a bad guy.
*Did that remind anyone else of Doctor Who? That Peter Capaldi episode. "Don't cremate me". I bet if you went back and watched everything Moffat wrote you could tell a lot about what interests/scares him.
I really like the twist on familiar elements and the series feels like 3 separate films in a way.
Production is really impressive. I found the effects and sets top notch.
So many clever ideas and cracking dialogue, I wouldn't mind Gattis and Moffat having a bash at Bond. Would certainly be interesting...
But as for this, if you like Vampire films but with a whole new slant, I seriously recommend this series. 👍
Out of character for the original version maybe. But this was clearly a new take. Riffing on all the old iconography. As I've said, they probably should have made that clearer in the marketing though, and not put based on the novel in the credits.
And to be fair about the nun point, she was very clearly not meant to be your usual Catholic nun. Her faith seemed to have lapsed, she was fascinated by creepy gothic stuff, and the other nuns seemed pretty horrified in a "how could she dare say that" way at a lot of the stuff coming out of her mouth.
And the warlord point, the last episode made pretty clear that he was meant to be nothing like the others of his time period. The bit where she susses out who she really was I think explains the showman side nicely. He was a coward who's afraid of death and suddenly he's this all powerful being, the complete opposite of what he felt like before, so he goes mad with that power, properly enjoys it. And why couldn't he have killed mozart? He's been around for a while. No reason why he couldn't have got around a bit.
It's fine not to like all this stuff because it's not like the book to be fair, but in the context of the show itself, I think it all makes perfect sense.
I don't think anyone is saying horror can't be funny - more often than not a little humor goes a long ways - but this was in an Army of Darkness or Freddy's Dead territory of camp that clashed with the rest of the universe which adhered to foreboding Gothic terror. There's dark humor that could be mined from that, but "Hay laaaaaaaadies!" didn't fit the bill.
But please don't get me wrong, I'm glad you got something from BBC's Dracula, @thelivingroyale.
However, mixed reviews or not I have a feeling I may love it!
I do seem to be in the minority to be fair. I dunno. I didn’t go into it with particularly high expectations, because it looked cool and I do really admire Moffat in general but he has let me down before (still can’t get over how awful Sherlock’s last episode was). But I really thought it was one of his better efforts.
Even the last episode, which was fairly ropey, I really liked. Dracula simply calling his lawyer to get out. The cremation scene. It’s definitely a very out there show but I loved it. When it got to the club scene I just thought about how mental it was that this was the same show as episode one and it made me realise again how lucky we are to have Moffat. Love him or hate him you can’t say his work isn’t memorable or ambitious. Just look at how dramatically Doctor Who went downhill once he left. His run was hit and miss, but it was never boring or out of ideas, which is what the show seems to have become without him imo. I wanted him to go at one point but now he’s actually gone I ended up stopping watching pretty much immediately. Think I and a lot of other fans of that show took him for granted.
I don’t understand some of the criticism of Dracula either. I completely get why you two don’t like it, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t get the people who loved the first episode or two and then hated the last. Shock change in setting aside, I don’t think it was that much worse. Thought it was a fairly consistent show in comparison to the last couple of series of Sherlock (which veered from brilliant to terrible from week to week).
And the issue with Sister Agatha is that she was so darn anachronistic, just like everyone in the period piece setting. A common characteristic of BBC productions.
Hope you do! I thought it was very impressive 😁
I think it's clever in the way it delves into Vampire lore from a completely different angle. Thankfully the makers wanted to do something very different and original with the Dracula story, which I think they achieved without abandoning it completely.
I think the series shows the makers had great fun creating a whole new take on Dracula, and it's infectious for the viewer. Especially this one who loved every minute of it 👍👹
But there's nothing original in this take, surely! A modernised Dracula has been done before. Period pieces with modern dialogues and references is now almost stapled at the BBC. Self referential humour in horror is also extremely common. Wisecracking villains too. "I don't drink... Wine." (here used twice) is not exactly new, neither is the photo of Mina as trigger of Drac's lust, neither is bringing Dracula to the world (here a completely redundant twist, as Victorian England is depicted as contemporary), neither is borrowing Lugosi's accent, etc. And what abysmal lines!" Did you have intercourse with Count Dracula?" I see self indulgence, not cleverness.
Well i thought the fact that Dracula takes on characteristics of whoevers blood he drinks was a cool idea. As was his reaction to cancerous blood. I also found the circumstances in which Lucy returns from the dead to be very well done. Her final scenes were riveting and the make up effects quite excellent.
I think the series pays respectful homage to past Dracula's, while still managing to be entirely its own thing. No mean feat if you ask me.
Trouble is the novel has been done so many times with films and TV series that what else is left to do with it that's interesting?
Moffatt and Gattiss have managed that in my opinion and seem to have a real passion for the subject matter. Proving if you can be imaginative and forward looking then there's life in the old Count yet.
Keep the source material, take off all the stuff that has been added over the years, take off the "homages" and self references, and you got something pretty solid.
I think Coppolla's version was pretty close from what i remember about the novel.
Shame it was such a bloated, misjudged, mess. Turning Dracula into a lovesick depressive and ruining Oldman's not half bad performance. Loved the music score though!
This new version i think balances modern sensibilities with the Dracula legacy with wonderful assuredness.
You can at least see this was a labour of love from Gattiss and Moffatt.
But I don't see the work of love I'm afraid. Not in the way they treated every single character they bothered to take from the source material. In The Tractate Middoth yes, there was plenty of love (and to love): it was faithful, sober, restrained and very efficient I thought. That Drac however is a mess.
"The BBC incarnation of DRACULA (Netflix) is smart, involving, and bloody terrific. Which is to say it's terrific and VERY bloody." Stephen King quote from his Facebook page.
Stephen King seems to be a decent guy and everything, but he's as uneven as a critique as he is uneven as a writer.