Back on Drac

JRM not as Dracula, but who cares?

Woo hoo! As I hoped, paying full attention during a second viewing of Dracula’s premier episode prompted Ter and me to watch the second episode last Friday night. The first time is always a rush of blurred images and mental questions that demand answers ahead of schedule, so unless I adore something from the first scene, as happened with Sleepy Hollow, my overall impression can result in a snap judgment. At least I recognized that Dracula deserved a second shot, and I’m glad I gave it to him. We reran the pilot just ahead of the second episode and have agreed that, yep, it’s a series worth watching.

It took the first scene in the second episode to hook me; now I am committed. I admit, however, that without Jonathan Rhys Meyers, it wouldn’t be as strong. He’s having as much fun playing Dracula pretending to be an American as Dracula is having fun pretending to be an American. There’s a sly humour in his portrayal that’s nicely balanced by his ability to fall into the vampire’s natural state of predator on the prowl. The guy has charisma, that’s for sure. I was mesmerized by his Hugo Boss commercials, for Pete’s sake. Put him in a period piece and I’m pretty well sunk. I liked him in The Tudors (though I maintain that the king he was playing was not Henry VIII), and he stole the show in Oliver Stone’s Alexander if only because he was so drop-dead yummy that his few scenes are better remembered than the bulk of Colin Farrell’s work in the title wig. So, as with Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt, if JRM is in it, I’ll give it a second look. In Dracula’s case, I’m glad I did.

Story-wise, it’s heating up as well. The twists and turns keep it interesting. The Order of the Dragon is the true villain of the piece, peopled by power-grubbing aristocrats allied with seers and vampire hunters. Few of the characters have taken hold as well as Dracula, but there’s definite potential in Mina, Harker and van Helsing. Renfield is proving to be a veritable Jeeves, Lucy is the perfect society confection, and Lady Jayne is the requisite leather-clad bad girl with a feral purpose of her own. She’s not as clever as she thinks she is, though. She knows there’s a vampire loose in London and wants to bring him down herself, but she hasn’t figured out that it’s the guy she’s already taken to bed. She’ll probably be the last to know.

Cheeseball animated fight scenes aside, I’m on board. My own vampires agree: it’s gratifying to see a vampire who accepts that he is a vampire!

Dracula Doesn't Sparkle

you would think ...

All summer, I’ve been eagerly anticipating Jonathan Rhys Meyers taking a turn as the count in NBC’s new series “Dracula”. With him in the title role, and with vampires desperately in need of salvation on the heels of the “Twilight” travesty, I thought, how can it lose?

Then I saw the premier episode on Friday night. Ter and I stayed up for it, in fact. I admit, I was horribly distracted through most of it (too much caffeine perhaps?), so will be rerunning it on demand before episode 2 the end of the week, but my overall impression is that Meyers is the sole reason for giving it a shot. He is, as expected, breathtaking, although I wonder why his character is pretending to be American when one of his most seductive features is his English accent. He slips back into it when he’s with Renfield, but in company, his voice completely lacks the timbre and charisma you’d think he needs to seduce his victims. Okay, that he needs to seduce me.

There were a lot of people in the first episode, and a lot of twisty turns that would have confused me even if I hadn’t already been distracted, hence my resolve to give it a second chance. I did catch a couple if things that piqued my interest – Mina is studying to be a doctor with Abraham van Helsing as her professor, and van Helsing himself appears to be allied with Dracula against the Order of the Dragon (a gang of witch hunters with a history as long as the Count’s). An uneasy alliance, to be sure, but a surprising one that warrants further study.

Oh, and animated fight scenes are cheesy unless you put out the big bucks for a crew at Industrial Light and Magic, so the duel between Dracula and one of the Dragon dudes (I forget which one) left me flat and resentful. It was so obviously computer-generated that I felt like I was watching a video game, which is something I will never do willingly. It’s understood that the industry aims at a demographic where I am no longer included, but still, if you’re going to slip animation into a live-action show, make it seamless so you can fool the oldies in the audience.

I love vampires and Dracula is the granddaddy of them all. Here is a chance to pay him due homage, so I am hopeful that the show gets better as it goes. I’ll give it a few more weeks before I decide for sure whether it’s worth my time.

At least he doesn’t literally sparkle, either.