Netflix/BBC One - Dracula (2020) TV Series

 

So having watched Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (BSD) recently on Netflix, I stumbled upon this other Netflix series and decided to give my review on it. I will state right at the outset that I highly recommend this series. It's only 3 episodes long at around an hour and a half each episode, so it's quite a quick binge-watch. But I do think it's a fantastic series and highly recommend it. A basic summary:

The series starts off as though it will be a faithful adaptation of the book, and I feel that sets things up quite nicely for the various twists and revelations that eventually come. From there, the details of the book and characters do show up but in far different ways, however it's all delivered in a manner that doesn't feel too jarring. I will admit that it sort of threw me off at the beginning because I did think they were trying to be faithful to the book. But once they introduced certain characters and when Jonathan Harker in particular started experiencing various things that were not in the book, I realized that I could not adhere to any expectations. It's a very good re-imagining of the story with some elements that are great and some that are not so great. The costumes, special effects and environments are amazing, especially in 1897 in Transylvania and on board the Demeter. 

I will reveal that one of my biggest gripes is that the series ended far, far too soon. They needed at least one more episode to really bring the story to a satisfying conclusion, especially as it pertained to Dracula and his apparent weaknesses as a vampire. I was very impressed with the psychological aspect. I loved how they sort of re-invented the powers and weaknesses of Dracula while keeping some of the tried and true elements of past depictions but, like I said, the ending left a little to be desired and I think it's because they should have had at least one more episode to solidify what they were trying to do with Dracula and his psychological fears. There are plenty of satisfying twists and turns that keep you surprised and the ending of the first two episodes are very well done, leaving you on a cliffhanger that you have to see what happens next! I think it's a worthy retelling of the famous Count Dracula story and I do recommend folks go and see it.  

I will be going over the series in detail so do watch the series and come back and read my review of it to see if you agree or not.

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

I have to say that I loved this portrayal of Dracula. They revamped him (pun intended) to give him a modern edge (and that will be explained momentarily) while staying true to the classic Dracula, at times feeling like they were paying homage to the Bela Lugosi/Christopher Lee portrayals, especially in the way this Dracula dressed and looked when he put on his vampire face.

I think what I liked most about this Dracula was that he was a monster through and through, literally up until the very end (which I'm a bit iffy about). Having watched Coppola's BSD, where Gary Oldman's Dracula was more of a softy and was all romantic and shit (and that has it's place in vampire lore, I suppose), this Dracula wasn't any of that. He wasn't looking to find love or seduce Mina Harker into becoming his bride or establish an eternal love. In fact, when he saw a picture of Mina, he really didn't react at all, which was refreshing after having watched BSD. No, this Dracula was all about himself...and blood!

Again, having to compare this to other vampire franchises, this was so fucking refreshing! A vampire who actually CRAVES blood and can't control himself around it! One of my biggest gripes about Legacies and the whole TVD universe was the fact that the vampires there never really craved blood. They drank it but never craved it. They could survive on blood bags or on animal blood, but when it came to human blood, they never really had a lust for it. With the exception of maybe Stefan, who had an addiction as it were, the other vampires never had a problem when it came to controlling their so-called blood lust. They became too docile and too human as a result of it.

 

Not so with Dracula! It was absolutely fantastic how Dracula would try to pass himself off as a connoisseur of sorts, claiming that he chose to feed on certain individuals when it so pleased him when, in fact, he couldn't help his blood lust. The moment he smelt it or saw it, the eyes would change and the fangs would come out. He might be able to control it for a time but he had to satiate his blood lust somehow. He had no choice, and I loved that. I loved it because that should be what a vampire does. That should be a part of the curse, that a vampire should not be able to control his or her blood lust as that is what defines the vampire monster.

What I also liked about him was that he didn't care about humans. While that may seem obvious considering he is a vampire, with movies like BSD or other vampire franchises, where a level or romanticism and glorification of Dracula or other vampires is involved, there isn't any such thing here. They try to develop it but with the clear intent of turning everything on it's head. Whether it's Lord Ruthven onboard the Demeter—who thought that Dracula had chosen him to be a partner—or it was Lucy Westenra—who thought she could be young and beautiful forever by Dracula's side...they were all shown the truth: Dracula didn't care about them. 

Which ties into the other aspect that I liked about this series. While it's a common trope that young people especially seek immortality and perpetual youth, even if it meant killing and feeding off of other people, that trope was turned on it's head here. There was nothing cool or romantic or seductive about becoming a vampire or becoming undead (there is a difference here). Though Dracula would often refer to those he turned into the undead as "brides," he carried none of the compassion and love that the term implicitly carries with it. First, there was no guarantee that Dracula biting and then killing a human would turn them into vampires. With Jonathan, he was surprised by how fast and how much of his "spirit" he retained when he awoke as undead. The humans he turned, he looked at them as more or less like toys or experiments. He knew that there was a great chance that they would not become vampires like himself, but would become "the unfortunate few who remain sentient as they rot." In Transylvania, those unfortunate few were literally left crumpled up in a box.

The others that were perhaps more evolved and closer to the vampire that Dracula himself was, he treated them no better. His 'brides' too were left in a box and were fed other humans for sustenance, even babies. And once that bride was no longer interesting or amusing to him, Dracula would stake her. It was incredible how heartless he could be, being amused at how a baby suddenly became undead and marveled at it, questioning whether or not he should let the baby live simply because he was curious about it (apparently, a baby vampire had never happened before). This was a Dracula who was a clear sociopath...he didn't care. And for fools like Lucy, who fell for that classic trap of thinking that 'the bad boy would only be good to her,' she soon realized that dating a vampire and even becoming a vampire wasn't all that it was cracked up to be.  

This is part of the reason why I hated the Lucy character. Props to the actress for doing such a great job because I both hated her character and applauded her demise. She was so fucking annoying but I felt like she represented the most vapid, most narcissistic of personalities in today's society. She got off on the idea of dating a vampire and didn't care that he killed people, including children. The fact that she didn't care was what had intrigued Dracula the most, since he had never met someone so devoid of empathy as himself. And the nice touch that they added to her character was that she lamented being so beautiful because people would only smile and love her because of that beauty, implying that perhaps she wished she wasn't so beautiful.

Well....

This was fucking brilliant! The makeup was excellent and again, props to the actress because I swear she had that Brundlefly thing going! I do wonder what she would have looked like had she not been cremated (which was brutal considering she was awake throughout the whole process). Suddenly she got what she wanted (immortality) but at a cost: her beauty. The one thing she had felt was a negative in her life suddenly became the one thing she cared about losing the most. And I suppose to Dracula's credit, he saw past the charred flesh and disfigurement and was intrigued by her spirit and her mind and her lack of fear when it came to death. He didn't care what she looked like and was content to keep her around forever (until he became bored with her, of course). He didn't really care about her at all. Again, she was an experiment, a toy that just didn't work out. He shed no tears and felt no remorse when she died. She was just another in a long line of broken toys.

I loved it because it removed all the romanticism and allure of being a bride of Dracula or being a vampire. You didn't get to stay young and beautiful forever. You didn't become this cool or aristocratic immortal who could live forever, feeding off of humans while having the time of your life. To quote The Lost Boys poster:

"Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It's fun to be a vampire!"

Well, not so much here. Here, you decayed, piece by piece. Your body literally started falling apart like a zombie. And if you retained any sentience or spirit, the hunger of being a vampire was overwhelming. As Mina would find out, Jonathan didn't have the will to fight his hunger. No one did. You became a slave to the blood lust and everyone around you, including your loved ones, were in danger. You became an abomination. And even drinking Dracula's blood didn't yield any positive results. For Zoe, all she got were the memories of those victims that he had killed, in particular Agatha Van Helsing. No supernatural powers. No advanced healing or shortcut to immortality. Through and through, this series turned vampirism into a true curse and I applaud it for that.

Speaking of Agatha Van Helsing....I fucking LOVED her! I really did. I don't particularly know why. I think a part of it was her personality. She was fearless! She was intelligent, witty, sometimes reckless, humourously aloof, confident (bordering on cocky and it would cost her), but she was most of all fearless. I loved the contrast between her and Dracula, in that Dracula would look at humans as toys or experiments and see himself as superior while Agatha would reduce him to an equal level of insignificance. She wasn't impressed with his powers or feared his fangs. She regarded him as a mere beast, a curious new species of animal that she was intent on learning about and ultimately putting down. He was like a rabid dog to her who just happened to walk upright like a human. 

The sheer gall she had to challenge him and disrespect him was the definition of brazen, bordering on arrogant which would cost her at times. The chess match between the two was an appropriate symbolism. It was a chess match, and when Agatha thought she had the upper hand and had Dracula all figured out, he would make a move that would prove her wrong. And vice versa. I think what I loved most about her was her sheer defiance of him. She knew what he was and how powerful he was and how savage he was...and yet she didn't care. She would not give him the satisfaction of knowing that she feared him in any way.

By far, my favourite Agatha part was when Dracula had her cornered. She had provoked him enough and now was his chance to take her and make her suffer. He had her dead to rights and she knew it. And yet, her resolve never faded. She faced certain death with the same defiance as she had always shown. And as he went in for the kill, her line to him was fucking great!

"Come boy. Suckle!"

Bad...ass!!! 

And I liked that as confident/cocky as she was, there were moments when Dracula surprised her and had her on the ropes and she showed genuine fear and uncertainty. But she would always bounce back and regain her footing, never allowing herself to become a victim, even when Dracula killed her. I feel like she was a worthy re-imagining of the Van Helsing character. 

Now I had mentioned that there elements that weren't so great and I truly believe that these elements were brought about because they only dedicated three episodes to this series. They should have had four. They should have had two episodes taking place in the late 19th century and two taking place in the here and now. I felt like having only one episode in the here and now rushed things and either didn't set up the final revelations about Dracula adequately or left a lot of loose ends that needed tying up and characters/institutions that weren't used to their full effect.

One revelation that I wasn't a fan of simply because there wasn't enough of a build up were Dracula's weaknesses. The idea that Dracula was repelled by the cross or was afraid of sunlight or could not enter into a dwelling unless invited in....that all these 'weaknesses' were mere habits that he adopted throughout the centuries made no sense. I think I get what they were trying to do, to create this sense of irony as it pertained to Dracula finally being free. Once it was revealed that the sun didn't burn him or that he could very well enter into anyone's house without an invitation suddenly removed major obstacles to him taking over the world, so to speak. That he was suddenly free from these inhibitors meant he was essentially unstoppable. But it was when he was unstoppable that he decided he needed to stop. Like I said, I get the ironic twist to it and I can appreciate it but they needed another episode to set this up properly.

I just found it unbelievable that in 500 years of existence, Dracula never tested those limitations. He never let his hand stand in the sun to see if it burned. He never pushed through a doorway into someone's house just to see if he could do it. I'll have to give credit to the TVD universe here because that's what every vampire on that show did....they tested their limitations. I find it hard to believe that Dracula never did that and he feared the sun and the cross and couldn't enter into people's homes simply based on the idea that he too, out of habit, came to believe the folklore surrounding vampires. 

Regarding his fear of the cross, I can appreciate that he feared it not because of the holiness implied by it, but by the symbolism of Jesus giving himself over to death, something that Dracula apparently could never do. While I'm quite content with the mystery of how Dracula became a vampire (as sometimes the origin story can be quite disappointing....BSD had a very disappointing origin for Oldman's Dracula), I felt like they kept hinting at a story that we should have seen. Dracula himself says that he was a warlord and Zoe went on about how Dracula's brother and father and sons all died in battle while he remained alive unnaturally, all because he feared death. Whether they were hinting that he was, in fact, Vlad The Impaler is never answered, but it's at least hinted at. 

For that reason, I feel like an extra episode was needed, if only to establish more concretely Dracula's habits and how they came to be. They could have gone over Dracula's history and perhaps delved deeper into his fear of death and how he came to fear the sun and all holy objects. If we were shown his fear of death in a more visual way, it would have set up Dracula finally overcoming his fear and embracing death all the more potent. We could have gotten a more plausible reason for him to choose death other than the ambiguous one that we got, that being that he didn't want to live with the shame of being a coward who feared death. That was weak.

I wasn't a fan of this ending, mainly because there was no logical reason for Dracula to finally embrace death when he was truly free to do whatever he wanted. And the manner of death was disappointing. The idea that drinking Zoe's blood because she had cancer and was thus "dying," and therefore her blood was poisonous to him because a vampire can't drink the blood of someone dying, made little to no sense. As Dracula himself pointed out: "You're mortal. You've been dying since the day you were born." I felt like they gave in and did what they had spent the whole series avoiding doing: giving Dracula a romantic edge. Him dying and creating this illusion of making love to Zoe as he slowly drained her life as a way to not allow her to feel pain, while erotic to a degree, wasn't consistent. He had spent the majority of the series lacking any degree of empathy towards anybody, but for his final act, he shows it? 

I also feel like they wasted the Jonathan Harker Foundation. The fact that Zoe admitted that their funding sources were questionable and Renfield admitted that their funding stream was opaque, if not "occult," they gave the Foundation a presence that they never used to full effect. I was looking forward to them experimenting on Dracula, performing questionable tactics and perhaps crossing the line on that which was inhumane, even on an entity that was inhuman. I felt like they could have set up a greater rivalry between Zoe Helsing and Dracula, continuing the battle between Dracula and Agatha but with Zoe in her distant aunt's place. Also, they could have delved more into Jack and his work at the Foundation as well as further exploring his feelings for Lucy and thus making his killing of her all the more poignant. All this would have been greatly served by another episode. 

Despite these flaws, I think this was a really good re-imagining of the Dracula story. As much as I do like BSD, I'd probably put this one over that simply because of how they portrayed Dracula and did away with all the romantic stuff.

Still, BSD had a topless Monica Bellucci. Kind of hard to beat that! 😎