Dracula - Episode 1 - Review - Series Premiere

Cast

The entire cast does a great job. Well, mostly. Johnathan Rhys Meyers has the worst American accent. He does a good job, and since the character is faking the accent too, I can excuse this much. Hardly anybody else is really noteworthy. They're all serviceable, doing much better than I'd have expected. Dracula is almost my favorite character on the show, but this female vampire hunter shows up towards the end. She's instantly my favorite. I also liked Abraham Van Hellsing, played by Thomas Kretschmann. Interestingly, this actor just recently played Count Dracula in a crappy Italian adaptation called Dracula 3D.

Writing

The basic thing that makes the show tick, the core concept, is that the novel from which the show has been adapted is now sexy and cool. It's a reimagining, but the time period isn't changed. Count Dracula, instead of being visited by Johnathan Harker in a Transylvanian castle, has come to London posing as an American entrepreneur named Alexander Grayson. In his guise, Drac promises cheap wireless electricity and other science miracles. Harker been made into a reporter who interviews The Dark Lord himself (interview with the vampire, get it??) about the cool science stuff. Dracula becomes enamored of Harker's fiance Mina, the spitting image of Drac's long-dead wife. All in all, the show keeps the plot moving along, but there's a serious lack of action to be found. This is a very talky kind of show. You'd think that any changes made to the century-old story would just enhance the experience, but the book had a vampire castle full of vampiric thralls and there's a ton of murder/sex/attitude. This show takes a much slower pace. Rather than being either scary or sexy, Dracula is mostly creepy. It's like, dude, quit staring at people. Weirdo. I'm sure the rest of the 10-episode season will ramp up a bit. Since this wasn't a pilot, there was nobody to impress. The show was already picked up, so they were allowed to take their time. Regardless, I'd hoped for more sex and/or violence!

Aesthetics

This show is gorgeous! The costumes are great and everyone has cool hair. The lighting and color definitely leave something to be desired, but it's never so bad as to be distracting. I'm mostly just spoiled by gorgeously-shot cable shows like Breaking Bad, so when a show on network TV seems like it's aiming for that level of production value, my expectations get upped a bit too. This looks about as good as you'd expect an NBC show to look, just a bit fancier with the cinematography. The soundtrack I really like. It's very tense! I just wished the writing warranted such slow, careful shots and such a spooky score. This show gets a lot right in the look, feel, and sound!

Overall, the show did not open as strong as I'd have hoped. There was one rather bad action scene and a lot of promises made, but something felt lacking. It does get a lot right, though, so I'm definitely curious to see if the rest of the show will turn out to be good! With a strong cast and a distinct aesthetic identity, I'm hopeful. Check out the trailer for the show below, and let me know what you think in the comments if you saw the episode!