Gatiss & Moffat to do Dracula for BBC

[Monsieur Xavier]

I didnt mind Renfield that's just the point when the show misses a step.

Spoiler

The Harker organization has existed for 123 years anticipating the day they would get their hands on Dracula. They built an underground bunker, and a safe room specifically designed to kill Dracula and vampires. The organization exists to do scientific research and if necessary contain and eliminate vampires. And when they finally get their hands on Dracula all it takes is one lawyer making a single threat to go to the police and the organization caves and releases the 500 year old mass murdering blood sucking monster. BS.

I would expect them to kill the lawyer and get rid of the body. Surely a secret scientific organization that has existed for over a century with it's own mercs can and would disappear a body and evidence if the alternative was releasing Dracula.

Yeah, I know. That was stupid too but once I shrugged over the wifi thing, the rest was easy to swallow and it was still nice to have a Renfield, Jake and Percy I didn't care but they're also part of the original book right (at least they are in Coppola's Dracula).

Random : I felt like there was a bit of C.Lee Dracula in this new one, some shots where the actor open his mouth wide with the teeth...

Spoiler: Pictures

 

[Joe Von Zombie]

.... And they lost me at episode 3.

Spoiler

I don't know if it's my own fault for not paying attention to the marketing, but the modern day aspect of this series was one painful eye roll after another. The third episode is Dracula 2000 cringy

 

[TheVileOne]

I think the show tried too hard to make Dracula into Hannibal Lecter.

Too much goofy meta humor for my tastes. You could clearly see Moffat's "voice" coming through, but it made the show just feel campy, weird, and goofy. I couldn't take it seriously.

I think Castlevania did a better job of doing a more "post-modern" Dracula that was more of an antihero.

Also, like Sherlock, this miniseries had so many strange tangents.

Additionally, while I have no problem with Van Helsing being a woman, this show didn't handle it well at all.

If you want to see a good example of a female Van Helsing character, see the Hellsing anime.

 

[TheVileOne]

I didnt mind Renfield that's just the point when the show misses a step.

Spoiler

The Harker organization has existed for 123 years anticipating the day they would get their hands on Dracula. They built an underground bunker, and a safe room specifically designed to kill Dracula and vampires. The organization exists to do scientific research and if necessary contain and eliminate vampires. And when they finally get their hands on Dracula all it takes is one lawyer making a single threat to go to the police and the organization caves and releases the 500 year old mass murdering blood sucking monster. BS.

I would expect them to kill the lawyer and get rid of the body. Surely a secret scientific organization that has existed for over a century with it's own mercs can and would disappear a body and evidence if the alternative was releasing Dracula.

Spoiler

I was far more annoyed with the diver ****ing shoving her ungloved thumb into dracula's mouth. And then she lifts her hand up and was like, "Yeah, vampire bite." That was a ****ing Simpsons gag.

This is Alien Covenant/Prometheus level nonsense here.

 

[Lighthouse]

.... And they lost me at episode 3.

Spoiler

I don't know if it's my own fault for not paying attention to the marketing, but the modern day aspect of this series was one painful eye roll after another. The third episode is Dracula 2000 cringy

I was halfway digging the show at first. Some really cool ideas and moments though with Moffit and Gattis' "Aren't we so clever and tongue in cheek" annoying dialogue.

Then I got to episode 3 and....

 

[elgaz]

Enjoyed the show very much overall, but eps 1 & 2 were definitely the stronger ones whilst 3 took some weird creative directions. I like some of the pseudo explanations for certain things that Dracula is averse to, and Claes Bang was just a joy to watch on screen, he was extremely well cast.

 

[TheFuture]

It felt kind of uneven as a whole, particulry episode 3.

On the positive side, I really liked this Dracula and Van Helsing - they were dynamite (talk about great chemistry). I'm not familiar with either of them, but the Dracula guy is smoking hot for 50+ yo man, and very charming. Van Helsing was the MVP, hands down.

Spoiler

I wasn't impressed with some of the choices they made in episode 3, and the explanation for his sunlight-phobia seams bogus (thought at no point in the series did they show that sunlight actually burns him just that he is averse, so cudos there). The focus should have been more on Zoe/Agatha and less on Lucy and Jack.

I did love the idea that as he drinks people's blood, he gains their memories, thoghts, language skills and alike. Neat way to bridge the cultural and scientific leaps of 123 years

Yeah there were some good ideas here about what made Dracula ticked.

I enjoyed it up until the twist at the end of episode 2. I can understand why Moffat and Gatiss went with that angle given how many times the story was adapted, but it just didn't work for me. It was way too jarring and robbed the show of what actually made it work.

It was oh so nearly a classic but I won't revisit it other than wait for some YouTuber to put up the best scenes of episode 1 and 2.

Bang was good; there was a danger at times of his portrayal going full on Carry On but he always retained a hint of genuine menace to keep it on keel. Loved Dolly Wells in episode 1 and 2 as well. She suffered most from that dumb twist.

 

[Da-Scribe]

I don’t mind modernizing things when it lends context. But this just felt like it was for the gags. And the claustrophobic nature of the show got dropped hard because of it, which felt like a loss of intimacy that makes many vampire stories work so well imo.

 

[KillerMcQueen]

Honestly I rarely think Vampire stories work well when

Spoiler

brought into the modern era

and this was not one of the exceptions for me, the twist really bummed me out because I thought they'd done a great job creating their own unique take on the story in the first two episodes, it was both very familiar and very different, but I almost entirely lost interest in the third episode.

 

[elgaz]

I liked the idea of a

Spoiler

time jump, and Dracula stuck in some kind of suspended animation for years underwater, but it may have been less jarring if they hadn’t gone so far forward. Maybe they should have reintroduced him in a WW2 (circa 1944) era, where he finds an England torn apart by war and a population who aren’t so scared of folklore/mythical creatures like vampires, but ‘real’ threats like the Nazis.

 

[Lighthouse]

Spoiler

I would have been fine with bringing him to modern day, but not the secret society garbage.

 

[Roose Bolton]

I think the show tried too hard to make Dracula into Hannibal Lecter.

Too much goofy meta humor for my tastes. You could clearly see Moffat's "voice" coming through, but it made the show just feel campy, weird, and goofy. I couldn't take it seriously.

I think Castlevania did a better job of doing a more "post-modern" Dracula that was more of an antihero.

Also, like Sherlock, this miniseries had so many strange tangents.

Additionally, while I have no problem with Van Helsing being a woman, this show didn't handle it well at all.

If you want to see a good example of a female Van Helsing character, see the Hellsing anime.

Let’s be fair, Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing isn’t really a ”Van Helsing” character. She’s closer to M from the 007 franchise than she is to Dracula’s archenemy and not really an applicable comparison.

 

[TheVileOne]

Let’s be fair, Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing isn’t really a ”Van Helsing” character. She’s closer to M from the 007 franchise than she is to Dracula’s archenemy and not really an applicable comparison.

Integra is literally Abraham Van Helsing's descendant. Dolly Wells also played a Van Helsing descendant in the modern day along with the nun version of Agatha Van Helsing. And they made it more of a Clarice Starling/Hannibal Lecter type of dynamic. That is why I made the comparison.

 

[Roose Bolton]

Integra is literally Abraham Van Helsing's descendant. Dolly Wells also played a Van Helsing descendant in the modern day along with the nun version of Agatha Van Helsing. And they made it more of a Clarice Starling/Hannibal Lecter type of dynamic. That is why I made the comparison.

Integra and Alucard are nothing like Clarice and Hannibal. You sir, are a madman and a fiend.

 

[MurkeNyou]

Gave it a shot. Watched hundreds of adaptations of Dracula.

Dracula 2000 is more entertaining

First two parts were not that bad, as soon as they dropped him in the future... slip-in-slide dog crap...

 

[The Shape]

Watched this all in one shot yesterday and enjoyed it for the most part. The time jump in Episode 3 didn't bother me as much as it seems to have bothered others, but I do agree that Episode 3 was the weakest -- particularly at the very end.

But I appreciated the series as a different take on the Dracula mythos and I'm glad they at least tried to do something different, as opposed to another straight adaptation of a story we've seen told hundreds of times.

 

[Deck Rickard]

Gave it a shot. Watched hundreds of adoptions of Dracula.

Dracula 2000 is more entertaining

First two parts were not that bad, as soon as they dropped him in the future... slip-in-slide dog crap...

That's a terrifying thing. Adopting a child is a long and stressful process for would-be parents. Imagine going through that, only to find out that the kid you selected is the megalomaniacal vampire.

 

[Black Narcissus]

I was on board till the..

Spoiler

.future/modern setting

.

 

[Iron_Stark]

Just finished watching this. First two episodes were great, third was abysmal. What the hell were they thinking? It was like watching a YA movie/rom-com/Lucifer episode with the texting and whatnot.

The time jump could've worked if they had made him a real fish out of water terrorizing people, befuddled by technology and the new world.

 

[Da-Scribe]

Just finished watching this. First two episodes were great, third was abysmal. What the hell were they thinking? It was like watching a YA movie/rom-com/Lucifer episode with the texting and whatnot.

The time jump could've worked if they had made him a real fish out of water terrorizing people, befuddled by technology and the new world.

They had already established he learned from feeding though, so it would've been hard to form an entire episode around that. They just shouldn't have done the time jump at all.

 

[spider-neil]

Episode 1 and 2 were stunning. I absolutely LOVED them. They dropped the ball big style with episode 3. I heard mixed reviews about this series going in and upon watching the first 2 episodes I was thinking, the general audience don't know what the **** they are talking about this show is great...and then I saw episode 3. Okay, I get the hate now.

 

[spider-neil]

Can I also say that Van Helsin completely stole the show and what they did with my favorite character in the 3rd episode was a disgrace. I really wished I had stopped watching at episode 2.

 

[KaijuDude1992]

Yeah they really did drop the ball with that third episode. I didn't hate it as much as some did, but the more time that goes by the more I come the realization that I still didn't really like it all that much either which is a shame because the first two episodes were so damn good. At least each episode was worth watching for Claes Bang's and Dolly Wells's performances even though they did some very questionable stuff with their characters in that third episode.

 

[spider-neil]

Yeah they really did drop the ball with that third episode. I didn't hate it as much as some did, but the more time that goes by the more I come the realization that I still didn't really like it all that much either which is a shame because the first two episodes were so damn good. At least each episode was worth watching for Claes Bang's and Dolly Wells's performances even though they did some very questionable stuff with their characters in that third episode.

Why did the third episode have to be set in the modern-day? What did the modern-day actually add? By far the best thing about the show was the battle of wills between Dracula and Helsing and they took that away and for what? Sure, the same actress who played Helsing was playing Zoe but the dynamic of the character had completely changed. The fiery personality of Helsing was replaced by someone who was frankly dull.

They could have had the play out their battle in the past. If the budget was tight you keep the settings to a couple of rooms.

To be fair, I enjoy the opening on the beach, I enjoy the scenes in the house and I thought the prison for Dracula was intriguing. I would say the minute the lawyer shows up and releases Dracula the show goes down the toilet.

So many plot holes;
1. Why did they allow Dracula to take the camera on the beach, they were in complete control?
2. Why would you give Dracula an iPad?
3. Would the law firm be on a retainer for over a hundred years?
4. How did the law firm know where the secret organization was?
5. Why did the secret organization let the lawyer in?
6. Why did the secret organization let the lawyer out?
7. They spent a scene on a toilet why does that not come into play at some point?
8. Why wasn't Lucy burnt to ashes?

 

[MurkeNyou]

That's a terrifying thing. Adopting a child is a long and stressful process for would-be parents. Imagine going through that, only to find out that the kid you selected is the megalomaniacal vampire.

M'kay... edit functions are on here, thanks for the heads up? Maybe a PM next time?