Dracula (BBC 2020)

The team behind the popular reinterpretation of Sherlock Holmes recently did their take on the other most popularly adapted character from English literature: Dracula. In three movie-length chapters, they adapted the novel’s signature set pieces—Harker’s journey to the castle, the Demeter’s journey to England, and the confrontation between Van Helsing and Dracula in London.

The first episode has some truly stunning new takes on elements of the story. And the least of these is the gender swap (an increasingly lazy way to freshen up old stories) of Van Helsing. More interesting is Harker’s faulty memory, as he is both repulsed about the nature of Dracula and in denial of the evil with which he has been infected. A climactic confrontation between Mina and Harker pits the evil of sin against the sacrificial nature of love.

The second episode builds up the ship’s journey more than the novel ever did. It becomes a bit of a whodunit, but the real mystery is the outcome of the last episode, which is left untold for most of this second episode’s runtime. Once again, there is the exploration of the hubris that thinks people can overcome evil while trying to interact with it (or deny it). A common theme running throughout much of this interpretation is the idea that the supernatural is real, and one denies it at one’s peril. That is where postmodernity has a point over the older framework it argues against.

The final episode introduces a twist that was designed to shock and bring the story into the modern-take that the writers used in their other show “Sherlock.” But it might have been better to find a way to have the whole series framed that way from the beginning. As it is, it only serves to shift things so much that the thread has been lost, and more questions are raised that the storytellers aren’t interested in exploring. After such a creative and insightful journey, they end on a note that might be the worst chapter in all of Dracula’s myriad interpretations. Dracula wasn’t the evil we imagined! He was just a man so scared of death he overcame it, and in embracing death he rediscovers his humanity? Pu-lease.