PAGE A8, KEIZERTIMES, JUNE 5, 2020
Netfl ix puts a new spin on infamous
Count Dracula in new mini-series
By TJ Reid
For the Keizertimes
“Listen to them, the chil-
dren of the night. What music
they make!”
Although legends of the
bloodsucking, darkness-lov-
ing undead have existed since
time immemorial everywhere
from Ancient Greece to Mes-
opotamia, it was Bram Stok-
er who codifi ed the myth of
the vampire in his classic 1897
novel Dracula. This landmark
piece of Gothic literature cat-
apulted the children of the
night into pop culture super-
stardom, and with this rise of
popularity an interesting thing
has happened: Our vampires
have gotten nicer,
sexier, and more
heroic. It’s hard
to remember that
these fi ctional de-
mons were once
the absolute epit-
ome of evil when
one stops to admire the hunk-
iness of an Edward (Twilight),
the sensitive brooding of an
Angel (the Buffy the Vampire
Slayer universe), or the silliness
of a Leith Evergreen (yes, this
is a shameless plug for my own
novel, A Funny Thing Happened
on the Way to the Apocalypse,
which is available on Amazon).
The latest adaptation of the big
daddy vampire himself, how-
ever, Netfl ix’s Dracula, effec-
tively brings the menace back
to the legend in a brilliantly
acted
four-and-a-half-hour
roller coaster ride of playfully
subverted expectations.
Developed by Mark Gatiss
and Steven Moffat–names you
might recognize if you are a fan
of either Doctor Who or Sher-
lock–Dracula is a thoroughly
British experience in the sense
that it is performed by actors
who you might not have heard
of, but who can act circles
around 90 percent of Holly-
wood’s talent. The clear MVP
here is the brilliant Claes Bang,
who plays a Count who can,
at the drop of a hat, shift from
silently sinister to chewing up
the scenery with such gusto
that I’m surprised he had any
room in his stomach for blood.
It is also British in
the sense that it
is very short: just
three
episodes
long with each
episode being an
hour-and-a-half.
This
for-
mat may cause the story to
lag a bit at times, particularly
in the third episode, which I
must say isn’t nearly as good
as the fi rst two. To talk about
the third episode in any detail
beyond this would be dan-
gerous spoiler alert territory,
however, as Dracula does what
BBC’s Sherlock does with great
delight: starting off with ter-
ritory that is familiar to those
who know the source materi-
al and then changing it up in
increasingly bigger ways until
you’re in a completely un-
review
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Claes Bang’s Count Dracula confronts Holly Well’s Sister Ag-
atha Van Helsing in Netfl ix’s fresh take on the well-worn char-
acter.
familiar place without quite
knowing how you got there.
As a fan of Stoker’s original
novel, I was thrilled with the
ways this series surprised me
throughout, even if the sto-
ry itself lagged occasionally.
Again, this is mostly a third ep-
isode problem, as the fi rst and
second episodes are brilliant.
An additional word of cau-
tion- Netfl ix may say that this
series is TV-14, but I can’t see
how this is possible. Dracula is
not afraid to get TV-MA gory
when it wants to, particularly
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in the fi rst episode, which in-
volves, among other horrors, a
man wearing the face of anoth-
er man and the beheading of a
nun. Maybe don’t watch this
one with the kids. If you can
stomach it, however, Dracula is
a bloody brilliant time that
not only doesn’t suck (again,
see my book if you want even
more vampire puns!), but also
effectively returns the vampire
to its rightful place: our darkest
nightmares.
Dracula is now available on
Netfl ix.
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