I hate this.
I like being an upbeat perky kind of guy and generally I think I am. It seems those with the nimblest fingers on the internet are indiscriminate hate machines jetting slurry over everything in their path, just so they can be the first to do so. And let's be honest its easy to find fault. I know it is. I do it all the time. Its the first thing you see: the bit that doesn't work. If an orchestra plays a bum note that's the note you hear and that's the note you remember. Which is why I like to be positive. Its less lazy, more active.
But Dracula's third episode was like a fucking dropped meringue.
This comes from a place of love and a place of sadness. There is no pain - it was just a disappointing TV programme - and if you're agonised by poorly realised entertainment then maybe you need to eat an apple or go for a walk or sift through that big pile of priorities that you swore you were going to get in the right order this year. It can be your resolution. Look, there's "Trump Going To War With Iran". That could go on top for now.
I've seen people demanding that they should get their licence fee back because Dracula got made. People claiming they hated Sherlock but they were somehow surprised they didn't like this. Claes Bang was a shitty cockney or a third rate Pierce Brosnan. It deviated too much from the original story (guys, you know nothing about the original story). Dracula was too gay. There were too many black and brown people. It was too arch and too self-referential (hard to argue with that).
I have no problem with people fucking with Dracula. Every film you ever saw fucks with Dracula. And frankly the more you know about Dracula the more the homoerotic subtext drops the sub completely: Dracula is a proper queer story. And if you can take the story of a 400 year old blood-sucking nobleman and an atheistic Dutch nun who is a master of the occult but you're bothered by Sacha Dhawen turning up then good luck to you, you're an idiot.
So, positive things: Claes Bang was great. No, you're wrong, he was. Big, silly, scary, funny, sexy, his accent smudged and European, not cockney you tin eared idiots. I liked him. He was exactly right.
Dolly Wells blew him off the stage, of course, but then she blew away most of the stage too. She was incredible. Moffat struggles with his women (in his scripts): they are sassy, sexy, brazen, and constantly spitting out put-downs and that tends to be the extent of their character development. I'm no fan of River Song. And there was some of that here but Wells utterly transcended it. She was magnificent. A Sister Agatha spin-off surely beckons. That's what the people are crying out for.
The first episode was great: a brilliant set up, fantastically visual, a new Dracula universe, different rules, different Dracula, camp and creepy with top-notes of dread and body-horror, a fantastic lead nun and a viable cliff-hanger.
The second episode gave us a sudden lurching movement into what looked like a mind-palace, the weirdly self-conscious bum note of the Inside No. 9 gag, but I loved that it turned into an Agatha Christie pastiche and again Wells turned it totally around with a bravura performance and a genuinely surprising twist.
The third episode. Oh. Oh dear. There were some good bits. I liked the beginning. I liked the confusion of a new Dolly Wells, sans Dutch accent, cropping up and owning the show. I like that her sick blood was poison to Dracula and that a vial of his blood could be weaponised against him. However, that that weaponising resulted in yet another cocking mind palace so Zoe Helsing could chat at length to her great aunt was tortuously slow and windily expositional. The scenes with Lucy and Jack and Quincy were reminiscent of Hollyoaks and seemed horribly dated and unaware. The nightclub scenes were the most lumpen and arthritic since Basic Instinct - I expected Claes to turn up bumping and grinding in a sweater with nothing on underneath. Not only was it woeful, taking the air out of the show, it was in interminable - scene after scene floundered on until you were begging to kill off these whey-faced poltroons and get back to Dracula Vs Van Helsing. You know, the fucking story. Even Lucy's ultimate fate was sign-posted like a golf sale. Jesus lads, trust us. We're an audience - you're not doing a puppet show at a creche.
And the end. Christ. What a shocking waste. Dracula's entire lore: the not coming into rooms, the hiding from daylight, the not looking in mirrors: its all because he's ashamed of not dying. He's sat there surrounded by corpses for five hundred years enviously looking on like a boy in a built up shoe on the touch-line. "One day," he thinks, "one day I'll show them. I'll die so good." But he won't. He can't - he's rubbish at it. They call him Vladdy No-death at home and hot tears rake his undead cheeks.
That was a very silly denouement to the show and one that I think disappointed everyone despite the best efforts of its principals. What a fucking shame.
Will it come back? I dunno. The first episode was rapturously received (except by people who don't have it within themselves to like anything - you know: fans). The last was a damp (blood) squib. A lot of people didn't like Claes Bang but everyone loved Dolly. So I don't know. I'd love to see them do some more mad shit but for Satan's sake get Moffat and Gatiss someone to answer to. This could have been amazing if they had been been reined in a bit.
Baffling. I'm calling for restraint. The restraint of beasts.
I like being an upbeat perky kind of guy and generally I think I am. It seems those with the nimblest fingers on the internet are indiscriminate hate machines jetting slurry over everything in their path, just so they can be the first to do so. And let's be honest its easy to find fault. I know it is. I do it all the time. Its the first thing you see: the bit that doesn't work. If an orchestra plays a bum note that's the note you hear and that's the note you remember. Which is why I like to be positive. Its less lazy, more active.
But Dracula's third episode was like a fucking dropped meringue.
 |
| Can I have a second series? |
This comes from a place of love and a place of sadness. There is no pain - it was just a disappointing TV programme - and if you're agonised by poorly realised entertainment then maybe you need to eat an apple or go for a walk or sift through that big pile of priorities that you swore you were going to get in the right order this year. It can be your resolution. Look, there's "Trump Going To War With Iran". That could go on top for now.
I've seen people demanding that they should get their licence fee back because Dracula got made. People claiming they hated Sherlock but they were somehow surprised they didn't like this. Claes Bang was a shitty cockney or a third rate Pierce Brosnan. It deviated too much from the original story (guys, you know nothing about the original story). Dracula was too gay. There were too many black and brown people. It was too arch and too self-referential (hard to argue with that).
I have no problem with people fucking with Dracula. Every film you ever saw fucks with Dracula. And frankly the more you know about Dracula the more the homoerotic subtext drops the sub completely: Dracula is a proper queer story. And if you can take the story of a 400 year old blood-sucking nobleman and an atheistic Dutch nun who is a master of the occult but you're bothered by Sacha Dhawen turning up then good luck to you, you're an idiot.
So, positive things: Claes Bang was great. No, you're wrong, he was. Big, silly, scary, funny, sexy, his accent smudged and European, not cockney you tin eared idiots. I liked him. He was exactly right.
Dolly Wells blew him off the stage, of course, but then she blew away most of the stage too. She was incredible. Moffat struggles with his women (in his scripts): they are sassy, sexy, brazen, and constantly spitting out put-downs and that tends to be the extent of their character development. I'm no fan of River Song. And there was some of that here but Wells utterly transcended it. She was magnificent. A Sister Agatha spin-off surely beckons. That's what the people are crying out for.
The first episode was great: a brilliant set up, fantastically visual, a new Dracula universe, different rules, different Dracula, camp and creepy with top-notes of dread and body-horror, a fantastic lead nun and a viable cliff-hanger.
The second episode gave us a sudden lurching movement into what looked like a mind-palace, the weirdly self-conscious bum note of the Inside No. 9 gag, but I loved that it turned into an Agatha Christie pastiche and again Wells turned it totally around with a bravura performance and a genuinely surprising twist.
The third episode. Oh. Oh dear. There were some good bits. I liked the beginning. I liked the confusion of a new Dolly Wells, sans Dutch accent, cropping up and owning the show. I like that her sick blood was poison to Dracula and that a vial of his blood could be weaponised against him. However, that that weaponising resulted in yet another cocking mind palace so Zoe Helsing could chat at length to her great aunt was tortuously slow and windily expositional. The scenes with Lucy and Jack and Quincy were reminiscent of Hollyoaks and seemed horribly dated and unaware. The nightclub scenes were the most lumpen and arthritic since Basic Instinct - I expected Claes to turn up bumping and grinding in a sweater with nothing on underneath. Not only was it woeful, taking the air out of the show, it was in interminable - scene after scene floundered on until you were begging to kill off these whey-faced poltroons and get back to Dracula Vs Van Helsing. You know, the fucking story. Even Lucy's ultimate fate was sign-posted like a golf sale. Jesus lads, trust us. We're an audience - you're not doing a puppet show at a creche.
And the end. Christ. What a shocking waste. Dracula's entire lore: the not coming into rooms, the hiding from daylight, the not looking in mirrors: its all because he's ashamed of not dying. He's sat there surrounded by corpses for five hundred years enviously looking on like a boy in a built up shoe on the touch-line. "One day," he thinks, "one day I'll show them. I'll die so good." But he won't. He can't - he's rubbish at it. They call him Vladdy No-death at home and hot tears rake his undead cheeks.
That was a very silly denouement to the show and one that I think disappointed everyone despite the best efforts of its principals. What a fucking shame.
Will it come back? I dunno. The first episode was rapturously received (except by people who don't have it within themselves to like anything - you know: fans). The last was a damp (blood) squib. A lot of people didn't like Claes Bang but everyone loved Dolly. So I don't know. I'd love to see them do some more mad shit but for Satan's sake get Moffat and Gatiss someone to answer to. This could have been amazing if they had been been reined in a bit.
Baffling. I'm calling for restraint. The restraint of beasts.
0 Comments