Dracula
2020
Original language: English
- drama
- action & adventure
The story
Transylvania, 1897. The blood-drinking Count Dracula is drawing his plans against Victorian London. And be warned: the dead travel fast.
What it’s like
Gothic candlelight and cold blue moonlight give way to sleek, modern London interiors in this three-part BBC miniseries, a juxtaposition of ruined Transylvanian castles, storm-lashed Black Sea decks and rain-slick Victorian streets rendered with sharp, polished digital clarity. Camera work is restless but precise: quick cuts, dolly pushes through candlelit corridors and playful, almost comic framing that lingers on a pale, mannered vampire with a nightmarish grin. The score swells with brass and strings and drops abruptly into silence, and the sound design leans on creaking timber and distant howls. The mood is witty, theatrical and arch, with horror punctuated by dark humour and a glib sense of pleasure in its own excess. Its rhythm is brisk and episodic, with cliffhangers and sudden reversals, and its central figures are a predator enjoying his cunning and a scattered band of wary survivors slowly learning to fight back. Violence is frequent and bloody but stylised, with gore on display and occasional sexual innuendo, and fear comes more from jump moments than sustained dread. It suits a Halloween binge or a playful late-night watch for fans of Moffat and Gatiss, anyone who enjoys vampire tales with a wink, and viewers who can handle regular bloodshed.
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