Monster Mania Day 24: NBC's Dracula Premiere

Written by Stu Cooper

One week ago NBC debuted their new take on the DRACULA mythos in the form of an episodic drama. This is following FOX debuting their new "Sleepy Hollow" show earlier this month. I'm a huge fan of the Universal horror franchises and Dracula has always been a favorite of mine. I'm very partial to Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee portraying Dracula who would be impossible to top. I tried to approach this series with an open mind and what I found was a mildly enjoyable vampire show with potential. Let's dive right into it.

Dracula is played by Johnathan Rhys Meyers of "The Tudors" fame and he brings a unique presence to the character that doesn't exactly scream classic monster. He plays a metrosexual industrialist version of Dracula, which is hard to wrap your brain around at first. This incarnation of Dracula is revived at the beginning of the series by Van Helsing (for reasons you will discover later) and goes on to become an industrial/electrical engineer in the United States. He develops technology that is almost identical to Tesla's work. Dracula plans to market this and have his way with the economy I suppose. It's an interesting take on Dracula's journey. Dracula has his assistant Renfield, and the two work together to manipulate the people around them. The focus of Dracula's efforts seems to be on a protagonist by the name of Johnathan Harker. Harker is about as cookie cutter and boring as it gets. I really just wanted to see this guy die in the first episode, but sadly it looks like he will take the hero role at some point. Van Helsing is actually somewhat of a villain and the morality of Dracula seems to be up in the air. So the show takes the roles we are used to and basically flips them. It's a good way to make the Dracula premise fresh but i'm curious to see how it goes over time. The villains in the series seem to be a cult like group called The Order who hunts down Dracula and his associates. I'm not sure why they are the bad guys, other than the fact that they kill people occasionally. I was actually rooting for them when they attack Dracula at one point.

Overall the show has a nice pace and provided enough classic Dracula moments mixed in with new Dracula moments to keep me entertained. I am not a fan of the actor who plays Dracula. I'm a bit burnt out on the sexy vampire stuff after Twilight and True Blood. I'd rather see a guy who was creepy and had a menacing screen presence. This guy just looks like a model with fangs and that is not Dracula worthy. The storyline elements seem interesting tho and I am going to keep watching to see where it goes. I'd love it if they involved other Universal Monsters at some point.