Dracula — Episode 3 — The Dark Compass — A Review

6th January 2020.

*Spoilers*

Now, that’s odd … 

I’ve just double checked the pile of letters I’ve got.

And realised one of them?

Informing me I was supposed to be getting a visit from a gas safety chap: to check that my boiler was functioning safely.

Between one and five.

Guess what?

I had a no show.

Phoning them in the morning seems to be the thing, I think.

~≈¥≈~

At any rate … ?

At any rate, it’s been a quiet day.

With little to do, except take some books up to the various charity shops in Brentwood High Street*.

Oh … 

And watch TV.

Yes, you guessed it … 

Dracula: episode 3 … 

~≈¥≈~

Episode 3 — The Dark Compass — opens on the Whitby shore: and shows us how Dracula (Claes Bang) survived the wreck of the Demeter.

And how he’s met by Dr Zoe Helsing, great great nice of Sister Agatha Van Helsing.

It seems the Count had been dormant for some one hundred and twenty three years.

It doesn’t take him long to figure out how to spring himself from the clutches of Zoe’s organisation … 

And hire an ace solicitor, Frank Renfield (Mark Gatiss) … 

And find himself fixated with Lucy Westenra (Lydia West†).

It seems she’s one of the few victims the Count … likes to keep alive … 

~≈¥≈~

Now … 

Good, bad or indifferent?

I have to admit, the Moffat/Gatiss cut of Dracula isn’t bad.

This episode?   Brings the Count into the modern era, AND brings the long since dead Agatha Van Helsing along for the ride.

And?   And in the process, filters the story through a lens of many things, in order to update it.

I swear, I saw traces of Lestat, marvelling at the changes in the modern world, and of Hannibal Lecter’s interaction with Clarice Starling.

Which is a good way of telling the story, actually: after all, looked at in one way?

Van Helsing is after a killer … 

Granted?

Granted, the ending isn’t quite what I was expecting: Helsing, dying of cancer, hastened on her way by a Dracula whose realised he’s scared of death.

But … ?

But, as an overall take on an old story, Dracula isn’t bad.

*        I’ve quite a lot of books on my shelves, that I’ve not read for a while.   I could bin them.   Or do what I did, today, and give them to a charity shop … or two … 

†        Who I last saw in Russell T. Davies’ Years and Years.   I have to ask … has she done anything with Chris Chibnall, yet … ?