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Dracula - Blood Vessel
episode 2
UK 2020
produced by Larry Tanz, Mark Gatiss (executive), Steven Moffat (executive), Ben Irving (executive), Sue Vertue (executive) for Hartswood Films/BBC, Netflix
directed by Damon Thomas
starring Claes Bang, Dolly Wells, Jonathan Aris, Sacha Dhawan, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Clive Russell, Catherine Schell, Youssef Kerkour, Patrick Walshe McBride, Lily Dodsworth-Evans, Samuel Blenkin, Anthony Flanagan, Alec Utgoff, Lily Kakkar, Andrew Byron, Natasha Radski, Scott Karim, Veronica Stanwell
screenplay by Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat, based on the novel by Bram Stoker, music by David Arnold, Michael Price
TV miniseries Dracula, Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat's Dracula
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Count Dracula (Claes Bang) is on board the Demeter, heading for
England, as a regular passenger, and as such, he charms Duchess Valeria
(Catherine Schell), whom he has known in her much younger years - and
ultimately kills her and drinks her blood. Soon he starts to kill other
passengers and crewmembers as well, and thus it soon becomes clear,
there's a killer on board. Most of the crew abandon ship eventually, while
Dracula is quick to pull a culprit out of his sleeve: Agatha Van Helsing
(Dolly Wells), who has been traveling in a shut off cabin and was alledged
to be terminally sick - but it was actually Dracula who put her there, and
who even chose all of the other passengers, just so he has a good diet on
board. Dracula accuses Agatha of being a vampire, but even when she's
about to be hanged and has the noose already around her neck, she can
convince the others that Dracula's the actual villain of the piece, and
soon the whole thing becomes a game of cat and mouse between Dracula on
one and Agatha and the survivors on the other side, with the latter
sitting inside a circle made out of pages from the bible so Dracula cannot
enter. And still the situation is soon to escalate, culminating in Agatha
blowing up the Demeter - and Dracula getting away only just, hiding in a
box of native soil that sinks to the bottom of the sea, and which he
emerges only over a hundred years later ... After a slightly
bumpy first episode
that relied too much on jump scares and just being flashy, this one gets a
better grip on its story, being more restrained in its direction (but
still featuring plenty of gore), and concentrating on an episode of the
source hardly touched upon in the book, leaving the writing relatively
free of fan service - thus what we get here is a boat-set whodunnit, and
even if the audience does know who's the killer it's fun to see Dracula
using his wit to get away with it, and (in the second half) Agatha Van
Helsing countering his every move. And both Claes Bang and Dolly Wells
deliver strong performances to make this work, too. Of course, there are
leaps of reason in this one, and some of the writing might be
over-convoluted, but as a whole it's good entertainment, and that the
thing doesn't take itself too seriously also helps here.
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