Is the BBC’s Dracula down for the Count? The series of the broadcaster Dracula adaptation has made viewers desperate for information about the show’s potential, but the finale appears to hint that there will be no more episodes.
Sherlock creators Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat scripted the series, which draws heavily from Bram Stoker’s seminal 1897 vampire story, while Danish celebrity Claes Bang plays the part of the villainous Count Dracula, following in the footsteps of famous onscreen bloodsuckers like Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee and Gary Oldman.
“It’s very hard to kill a vampire,” said Gatiss, when asked about the chance of another batch of episodes.
“Do you understand what I mean?” He lasted. “What they do is ”
However, Steven Moffat was cagey about future episodes.
“That would be to give away how it ends, would not it?” He explained when asked about the series’ future. “So you’ll have to wait and watch.”
And in Dracula’s final installment, The Dark Compass, it certainly seems like the play has ended for good…
After realizing that a lot of his vampire”weaknesses” are habits borne out of pity, Dracula is persuaded by Sister Agatha (Wells) that this time he’s been running from passing, and so the Count decides to finish it all. Drinking the cancerous blood of Agatha’s descendant Zoe (in whom Agatha was conversing), Dracula willingly poisons himself since he kills both Agatha and Zoe.
“After all this time, did you think I would let it hurt?” he asks.
One of the final shots of this series is a prone Dracula and Zoe, apparently both deceased, as their souls converse on another plane, and honestly, it is hard to determine how the series can talk itself from that one…
Do not expect to be seeing anything for a while, if the BBC does indeed opt to go through with another series.
Though the series is comprised of three episodes, Dracula entered development over two and a half years ago, in June 2017. In October 2018, manufacturing took over a year — including seven months of filming, after the series was commissioned by the BBC.
So don’t expect to see anything until mid-to-late 2021. Moffat’s and Gatiss’s previous series, sherlock, was renowned for lengthy gaps between series.
Although Dracula’s first season’s events hewed pretty close to Stoker’s original storyline, the series’ creators weren’t afraid to make adjustments where necessary.
Asked about the initial series, Bang said that” there’s stuff in here that strays. In a cool way. And offers you that fresh spin on Dracula.”
“Why do you more of these that we have? They’ve done them. Thus, we wanted something else and something new, and that has happened .”
This might suggest that even if Gatiss and Moffat decide they’ve already used all the best parts of the original publication, they might still find ways to turn the story to fresh, original directions — it is surely what they did using Sherlock, later blatantly burning through the most famous stories in string two to challenge themselves.
If there’s some other string, we’d presumably learn that Dracula survives his jealousy and we could see him attempt to reevaluate and endure to Agatha’s values, doing some great even as he hunts for peace in passing — but according to how to string one ends, it is rather difficult to see where else there is to proceed.
Back Claes Bang would return as the villainous Count Dracula himself if the show came there might be no show without him. Bang had won recognition for his star turn in the 2017 arthouse satire of Ruben Östlund The Square before conducting the Count.
Series one also featured John Heffernan (Luther) as Dracula’s sufferer Jonathan Harker and Dolly Wells (Doll & Em, Blunt Chat ) as Sister Agatha Van Helsing, although like all of the rest of the cast, these figures expired so it is hard to imagine them making a grand return. Though when it comes to the supernatural, one never could tell…