Think you look bad after overindulging in the sins of sloth and gluttony? You can’t be worse than the undead on BBC’s Dracula.
Denmark’s starred blood sucker in this three-night bloodthirsty revamp of Bram Stoker’s classic.
Written by those clever creators of Sherlock – Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss – it was deeply unsettling, nauseating and brilliant.
I’m going to need physio after four-and-a-half hours of whipping my head behind a cushion every ten minutes.
In 1897 in Transylvania, English lawyer Jonathan Harker arrived at Count Dracula’s castle to meet his new client. It wasn’t a relaxing stay.
There were flies everywhere, someone scratched Help Us on the window, then ghouls jumped out of coffins and chased him. A zero rating so far on TripAdvisor.
Harker later tells this to Sister Agatha Van Helsing, played with relish by Dolly Wells, but he looks “rather drained”.
A fly flutters behind his eyeball and he has no fingernails. In fact, this entire series made me feel grateful for my fingernails.
Turns out he was dead. Or rather undead. It was better news for Dracula, who looked much younger after quenching his thirst.
In fact, he’d turned into a bit of a dashing East End geezer who could have been running the Queen Vic.
Instead, he emerged naked from a wolf – “I love a bit of fur” – while nuns stood transfixed in formation as if they were about to perform All The Single Ladies.
Dracula killed most of them in a gory murder spree – my husband told me this in a running commentary because I couldn’t watch.
Episode two didn’t let up – it began with a severed hand crawling across the floor and by the end Dracula had killed almost every crew member on a ghostly ship.
The horror of it all was no doubt huge amounts of fun for the BBC make-up department – less so for my appetite or subsequent sleeping.
In the last episode it was the present day, with Agatha’s descendent Zoe a scientist fascinated by Dracula.
She locked him up for research but the pesky count discovered the wi-fi code, borrowed an iPad and called a lawyer. Damn those vampire rights.
Dracula pursued his obsession with his favourite “bride” Lucy, wooing her on a date in a graveyard that led to some erotic neck biting.
Before long, poor Lucy was burnt alive in a coffin while Angels by Robbie Williams played at her funeral.
By this point I could imagine a Dracula series, with weekly victims, but suddenly it was all over.
After some cold hard truths from Zoe, the count drank her poisoned blood, effectively committing suicide – and that was that. I guess no sequel then?
Unless he comes back from the, er, undead? That would really suck.
