Dracula, BBC1, review: this gloriously hammy adaptation paid homage to Christopher Lee and Hammer House of Horror – inews

CultureTVMark Gatiss and Steven Moffat's adaptation of the Bram Stoker classic was camper than the annual panto at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern

Wednesday, 1st January 2020, 10:32 pm

Dracula, BBC1, 9pm

Its notoriously difficult to get an adaptation of a classic just right: play too safe and youre accused of bringing nothing to the party. Take too many risks and youve thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

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If the scenes were full of small references to classic horror, including a delicious nod to one of The Omens most notorious scenes, the script was camper than the annual panto at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern - at one point, Dracula casually announced You are what you eat before busting out his best lawyer jokes, and throughout, the charismatic Bang was clearly having a ball as a man repeatedly referred to as the devil himself.

It wasnt all about the dark lord, however. Dolly Wells came close to stealing the show as the acerbic Sister Agatha, who described herself as your worst nightmare, an educated woman with a crucifix before leading a phalanx of nuns against the vampire in the midst (I told you it was camp). She turned out to have a secret of her own, a famous surname which will probably have had purists clutching their pearls. As will the decision to leave John Heffernans ravaged Harper trapped in a Budapest nunnery before sending in fiance Mina (Mofydd Clark) to attempt a rescue.

However, as fans (and foes) of Sherlock are all too aware, Moffat wouldnt be Moffat if he didnt spend some time tinkering with a perfectly good story, adding in self-referential flourishes and messing around with the timeline.

That he got away with it, in this first episode at least, is largely down to some solid special effects, which like everything else in this show walked a fine line between genuinely scary (flies inserting themselves in peoples eyes, the dead rising from their coffins) and knowingly ludicrous (Dracula pulling himself with satisfaction from a wolf carcass before tossing off another casual bon mot). Good gory fun then, although, like every Moffat-sceptic, Im intrigued to see how it might come together over the next couple of days.

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Dracula, BBC1, review: this gloriously hammy adaptation paid homage to Christopher Lee and Hammer House of Horror - inews

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero