“I knew the future would bring wonders. I did not know it would make them ordinary.”
Wow. Well, I suspect that won't have pleased everyone as much as it pleased me. Moffat's clever structural games and Gatiss' fondness of allusion don't appeal to everyone as much as they do to me. Personally my only concern is that a programme broadcast on the first three days of January could plausibly end up as the best thing on telly in 2020. The episode, and the series, really are that good. And it's not all clever plotting, or smirking when we hear good old Bela echoed in "Children of the night- what music they make". It's also horror, and real, effective horror at that. And heart. Lots of heart. For the record, the end made Mrs Llamastrangler cry.
It's a bold move to properly resolve the cliffhanger at the end of the first episode at the start of the third. It is, though, perhaps even bolder to invite comparisons to Sherlock by fast forwarding to the present day. It's lovely to have, though, after the initial excitement with the helicopters, some time to breathe, and to allow Dracula to acclimatise himself to the twentieth century, a time of wonders for him, where even a poor household has access to untold wonders, and even to chide us on how we take all this for granted.
It really should be an obvious, tired cliche to have Zoe Helsing be a great grand-niece of Agatha who happens also to be played by Dolly Wells, but it somehow isn't, because blood is lives, everyone is drinking each others' blood, and we can be poetically ambiguous about which Van Helsing is which. Likewise, the conceit of having the Jonathan Harker Foundation (nice bit of misdirection with Jack's phone) wanting Dracula for his blood is only really there for characters to meet each other so the plot can happen, but it allows us to meet this version Renfield, played with comical panache by Gatiss, yet again getting away with cheekily writing himself a fun character to play. And it's clever how we see Dracula scoff at the notion of rights- he's a vampire aristocrat, so he's all about blood; he and the probably-going-to-be-reshuffled Jacob Rees Mogg should get on well- only for Renfield to use his legal rights to get him freed.
Alongside Claes Bang, though, the other star is Lydia West as this version of Lucy Westenwra. She may have been bloody good in Years and Years but she's bloody extraordinary in this, perfectly playing the nihilistic charm of the bored, beautiful hedonist. Her dialogue tempts fate, of course- "I'll sleep when I'm dead" and "everyone smiles when you're pretty" are both dead giveaways if you're paying attention. And Dracula soon ends up giving her a regular thrill be feeding off her in at least a bit of a gesture towards Bram Stoker's novel. And yes, of course the feeding is a not-very-subtle metaphor for sex. We expect no less.
But the horror of this conception of the undead is present too, with Dracula calmly informing Lucy that exactly nine occupants of the graveyard are "suffering" in their coffins- and one horrific undead child has managed to get out. The reveal of what it looks like is superbly done.
But the real horror is for Lucy- not her rather erotic and cheerfully longed-for death; not the existential horror of being undead; not even the unimaginable torture of being cremated while conscious. No; it's the fact that she's disfigured, and simply cannot live without being beautiful.
But the ending is not hers; it belongs to Agatha/Zoe, who ends by confronting Dracula over his fear of facing death, the common thread that binds together his weaknesses. I'm not sure this quite works if you look too closely, but it's so artfully done that we don't particularly care. And that final scene of Dracula and Agatha dying together, erotically, with death and orgasm literally metaphors for each other... that's romantic, and perfect. Because the reason why this is sublime, and Twilight is shite, is not that vampires shouldn't be romantic. They absolutely should. But the romance must always be twisted, never vanilla.
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