NYCC '13: Early Screening of NBC's Dracula

I attended the first public screening of NBC's Dracula last night at New York Comic Con. To be honest, I hadn't heard much about the show except for a couple teaser clips and posters so I wasn't really sure what to expect. The only tidbit I knew was that Cole Haddon was a creator of the show and I had loved his graphic novel, The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde.   FYI, he kept his promise.  There are no sparkly vampires.

This post is SPOILER-FILLED so if you are allergic to spoilers,

go read another tasty article on [insertgeekhere].

Because I blinked at the exact wrong moment, I missed seeing what year the show takes place in but it seems to be Victorian age London. The premise is Dracula is pretending to be an American industrialist in London. He is there to battle an ancient order of bad (possibly?) humans that were involved with his past. This is actually a revenge tale with a very similar feel to ABC's Revenge but with much better violence. There is also the love story because it's Dracula so there has to be a love story. It seems to be the b-story to the revenge theme, at least for now.

My groan moment was finding out that Dracula's partner in revenge was no other than Van Helsing. That seemed like too much. I was also a little put off by the lack of name mentions. A lot of characters were mentioned but their names didn't really stick. I didn't know Renfield was Renfield until I confirmed it on imdb.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers is a convincing vampire in my opinion. He plays it very reserved for the most part, so when he needs to be angry it is all the more shocking. I was also excited to see Katie McGrath was part of the cast. She was my favorite part of Merlin as Morgana. While she wasn't a big part of the pilot, I can't wait to see what her character becomes.

While Dracula isn't a new story, their take is an interesting one. The pilot asks a good amount of questions while laying the groundwork for the show to grow.  Plus, I trust the writing of Cole Haddon. I am totally willing to give this series a try and you should too.


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