Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Cast: Claes Bang, Dolly Wells, John Heffernan, Joanna Scanlan, Morfydd Clark, Lujza Richter, Lyndsey Marshall, Corinna Wilson, Mark Gatiss, Matthew Beard, Tim Ignall, Jonathan Aris, Chanel Cresswell, Petra Dubayova, Sacha Shawan, Youssef Kerkour, Phil Dunster, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Patrick Walshe McBride, Lydia West, Clive Russell, Catherine Schell, Samuel Blenkin, Anthony Flanagan, Alec Utgoff, Dilyana Bouklieva, Andrew Byron, Lily Dodsworth-Evans, Ria Fend, Katherine Jakeways, Lily Kakkar, Scott Karim, Anthony Kaye, Olivia Klein, Abdulla Majid, John McCrea, Sarah Niles, Sofia Oxenham, Natasha Radski, Joakim Skarli, Veronica Stanwell, Cat White, Millicent Wong.
There is the feeling of immediate let down where the pulse that has been raging with excitement, suddenly finds that its gone silent, the movement slowed to such an extent that you might find yourself wondering if what you were enjoying the experience of before, suddenly the spectacle is diminished and the beauty becomes faded, jarred by the realisation that the anti-climax can come, even in the most intense of relationships.
The association between sex and death has always played a large part in the vampiric legend, but it is to the Irish writer Bram Stoker, friend of Oscar Wilde and distant relation to Arthur Conan Doyle, that the seeds of such scientific realism were given birth by, and until now captured across the screen in various guises arguably with great examination more so than any creative monster in the history of film and television.
Even in the maligned in some quarters 1992 film starring Gary Oldman, Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder, Dracula fitted the times, contrasting the line between blood and disease, it is no wonder that Anthony Hopkins, as Van Helsing draws the comparison between civilisation and ‘syphilis-ation’, this against the back drop of the AIDS crisis was the leap that had only been made in terms of titillation and 1970s television codes that hampered the Hammer House of Horror productions and was barely hinted in during the first great cinematic feasts starring Bela Lugosi and the brilliant, but ultimately betrayed by time and scope Nosferatu.
In the hands of self-confessed horror aficionado Mark Gatiss and his Sherlock Co-creator Steven Moffatt, the teasing of a new version of the old literature legend was surely to be one greeted with passionate responses, and with Claes Bang in the titular role, played with tremendous appetite and appeal, and Dolly Wells as the spikey and sharp-tongued Sister Agatha, there seemed little to doubt that this would be one of the finest versions of the demonic blood sucking beasts to strike fear into the audience.
Across three episodes the illusion to the downfall of the Keith Waterhouse’s Billy Liar comes to mind, the first act setting up the preposition with angst, laughter, brutal examination, the second a joyous trip through the imagination of the writers, aided exponentially by treating the second episode as a voyage of the damned and a murder mystery, and then the third, the moment in which you expect to have witnessed the greatest part, the one that carries the show itself, is somehow that serious anti-climax, a movement in time an audience could probably get on board with, the effects still worth their weight in macabre gold, and yet the story as whole suddenly felt lightweight, porous, unfortunately not worth the extreme high it was aiming to be and whilst the end was beautifully shot, it should be considered perhaps a moment of deceit that has benefitted from its absolute brilliance that adorned its start.
A tale suited to the age, but one that neglected its final climax, Dracula untethered, unwound, love at first bite but which unfortunately left a dark bruise in its place.
Ian D. Hall