BBC's 'Dracula' gets female Van Helsing and vampire who makes evil sexy; here’s what to expect
BBC’s upcoming series ‘Dracula’ has already garnered excitement. And why not? With Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat onboard, things can only reach epic proportions for this Bram Stoker classic. So, what can one expect from ‘Dracula’?
Per the showmakers, the “Three feature-length episodes will re-introduce the world to Dracula, the vampire who made evil sexy. In Transylvania in 1897, the blood-drinking Count is drawing his plans against Victorian London. And be warned: the dead travel fast.”
In the original 1897 Gothic horror novel, Stoker tells the story of Count Dracula, an undead, centuries-old vampire, and a Transylvanian nobleman, and his attempt to move from Transylvania to England so that he may find new blood and spread the undead curse. The tale also witnesses a battle between Dracula and a small group of men and a woman led by Professor Abraham Van Helsing.
It’s a timeless tale. Why then does it need a reboot? How is this going to be any different from all its previous iterations? For one, there’s a huge twist in the character of Van Helsing. Instead of an elderly Dutch scientist and doctor, In this new series, Van Helsing is a woman.
Yes. According to a Radio Times report, Van Helsing in this show is Sister Agatha (Dolly Wells) -- Agatha Van Helsing -- a Dutch nun who rescues Dracula’s victim Harker (Jon Heffernan) before taunting the vampire outside the gates of her convent with her own spilled blood.
Series co-creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss reportedly didn’t set out to make this big a change. “It came about a different way – it wasn’t really that. Sister Agatha is [a character] in the book, though she’s got a tiny, tiny bit of the book. She’s got a much better agent now, clearly. We were trying to work out how to write these scenes and make them interesting – because you know, it’s a dead man talking to a nun, it’s not potentially that riveting. So we came up with the idea of an atheist nun – we just called her atheist nun, the nun who didn’t really believe in anything and just made lots of jokes,” said Moffat
“And that character immediately leapt to the top of the script. You just thought ‘Oh my God, that’s great.’ And very, very quickly we just thought well… that’s Van Helsing, isn’t it? We don’t need anyone else. We just need the nun. And then you think, nuns are more or less dressed in a superhero outfit for fighting vampires, aren’t they? They’re wearing a sodding cross! Why didn’t Bram think of that one?” he added.
Another thing that is always a certain from the Gatiss and Moffat factory of works is the ability to create an anti-hero so deliciously evil, it overshadows all else. And who else is the greatest anti-hero of all time, if not Count Dracula?
The Gatiss and Moffat touch is visible in the show’s trailer. Dracula is for the lack of a better word sexy in his evilness. He is sly. He is cunning. And he doesn’t care. With that in-store, to do is wait in excitement.
Officially commissioned by the BBC, the show will be available for streaming on the BBC in the U.K. and Netflix around the world January 4.
