Dracula - The Nun's Tale

The arrival of the helicopter at the end of the second episode of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss's adaptation of Dracula could only have been made worse if Donald Trump had emerged from it. Or Noel Edmonds. That, indeed, seemed to be the consensus in the reviews. Now that the dust is starting to settle, perhaps it is worth taking stock. The first two episodes were just glorious, whilst the third was a muddled and bizarre let-down. What went wrong? Before that, though, let's linger on the good stuff.  

"What is your interest in me, Agatha Van Helsing?" 

 What impressed me most was Moffat and Gatiss's dialogue. For the first time it was given real space to breathe. The exchanges and pithy put-downs were less quickfire than those that dog Sherlock, and you were given the chance to savour individual lines. Many of the best ones were delivered by Dolly Wells' wisecracking nun, Sister Agatha Van Helsing. The pick of these was the answer to Jonathan Harker's question about her continuing presence in a convent despite having lost her faith in God: "Like many women my age I'm trapped in a loveless marriage, maintaining appearances in order to keep a roof over my head." Emasculating, philosophising, waspish and worldly, she was the undoubted star of the production.  She had all the memorbale lines. "Why would the forces of darkness want to attack a convent?" she is asked. "Perhaps they are sensitive to criticism," is her reply. 

"I'm all your nightmares at once.  An intelligent woman with a crucifix!"

There is no criticism to be levelled at the second episode. It was sublime. That it made me recall Werner Herzog's magnificent take on the story, Nosferatu the Vampyre, is no faint praise. Unlike many other adaptations, Herzog's version lingers over the voyage of the Demeter towards Western Europe, eventually sailing crewless - apart from the dead Captain who is tied to the rudder - right into the heart of the city of Delft. It might be the old sailor in me, but I love horror when it is set on water: I can think of few things as terrifying as a mysterious force randomly picking off the crew and passengers of a ship as it meanders aimlessly through a queasy sea-fog. Moffat and Gatiss have clearly taken this onboard and devote almost all of the episode to this voyage. It is a masterstroke.  

Klaus Kinski as Herzog's Nosferatu

The pair might also be channelling Herzog in the roles given to the creatures of the night. The London Review of Books film critic Michael Wood has remarked that the real stars of Nosferatu the Vampyre are the rats. "Like a gang of extras in a Hollywood epic - large, swarming and full of energy" they overrun the town, preparing the way for their grotesque and terrible master. Likewise, and no doubt helped by the capabilities that CGI provides for smaller and less herdable beasts (although I'm sure herding rats is no easy task) Moffat and Gattis do wonders with that post-mortem visitor, the blowfly. The first thing that we actually encounter in their version is a buzzing fly – from a distance and then in sharp magnified close-up – and then – my skin still crawls with this memory – a shifting shadow behind Harker's eyeball. "Where there is flesh there are flies," Dracula advises Harker. Indeed!  

Incidentally, John Heffernan as Harker is excellent, although his resemblance to Leonard Rossiter did make me giggle inappropriately. There is a gentle passivity to his portrayal that is faithful to Bram Stoker's creation, although this does tap into the novel's flaws. It is very easy to ignore that Stoker's Dracula is a real potboiler, the work of a hack writer who had the good fortune to stumble upon the bones of an timeless and irresistible story. Almost all of the characters are clumsily drawn ciphers, one-dimensional and indistinct, not least Harker himself. This alone has been the base of an argument that I've made for the bland surprise and passive wonder that is at the heart of Keanu Reeves' portrayal of Harker in Francis Ford Coppola's excellent 1992 adaptation.

Does the third episode make a mockery of all of this? Although I remained gripped, at times it was too clever for its own good, coming across as a jumble of tired undergraduate takes on Stoker's novel: immigration and the fear of the foreigner; sexual disease that is borne in the blood; the tensions between the past, and technology and modernity. And in contrast to the opening two episodes, which took place solely within Dracula's mesmerising and labyrinthine castle and Sister Agatha's curiously similar convent, and then aboard the Demeter, the final part was too flighty with its locations. The claustrophobic focus of enclosed nightmarish spaces was not there and the drama was lost.      

But then the problem with the Dracula story has always been the end. To drive a stake through the only charismatic entity in the tale is problematic. As the Count weakens and our dreary heroes close in on their quarry we cannot help but feel disappointed. Therein, also lies the main problem with the third episode. Other than a Obi Wan Kenobi type presence and the occasional flashback, Sister Agatha is absent. Moffat and Gattis had solved the charisma conundrum by conjuring up a match for the Count. And then carelessly discarded her to the world of the undead. Such a shame. But then will we ever be able to think of Count Dracula again, without also thinking of Sister Agatha Van Helsing? For me it's an unequivocal 'No'. In which case, Moffat and Gattis have earned their part in the pantheon of vampire lore.