Dracula on Netflix: 3 things we want from the new miniseries

With Netflix and the BBC working together on a new version of Dracula from Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, here’s what we want to see.

Well, put this down for next year’s Netflix and Chills event (maybe). As reported by The Wrap, Dracula is getting a fresh coat of paint for Netflix and BBC One courtesy of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss.

Put us down as pleased that Drac is back, but that doesn’t mean we’re immediately going to give Gatiss and Moffat a pass. The world has changed a bit since Sherlock blew up, and we expect more — and better — from our TV these days.

We’ve boiled it down into three points:

A good Dracula

As The Wrap notes in its write-up, the count “made evil sexy,” although that didn’t really start until the original American adaptation with Bela Lugosi as Dracula (and the preceding stage play that inspired the film even more than the novel did).

But if Moffat and Gatiss can make Sherlock Holmes sexy, then they can probably make Dracula also attractive. However, the most important thing is the vampire’s predatory aura. He might have a veneer of culture about him, but at his core, Dracula is a hunter. Tragic love figure he is not.

Only somewhat facetiously, I’d suggest that Benedict Cumberbatch actually wouldn’t be bad in this role, especially considering that he’s already played Frankenstein’s monster; he has just that touch of unsettling about him in most of his roles, and it would suit a vampire very well. (Besides, Avengers 4 is done, and he might have some time after the next Doctor Strange film.)

Better gender politics

Although this won’t be a modernized take on Dracula, one can only hope that Moffat and Gatiss have learned a little something from the responses to the women of Sherlock. Lucy Westenra and Mina Murray Harker are both tormented by vampires during the novel, with Lucy mostly existing to bring a few men into the story since they want to marry her and then die thanks to Dracula. Mina does a little better, in the sense that she at least gets to live.

This is also a good time to revisit the women Dracula lives with. What we usually refer to as his brides now aren’t explicitly his brides in the books (it’s complicated). This is not where Moffat and Gatiss should see an opportunity to get weird with female bodies and the male gaze.

They probably will, but it’s nice to hope that things could change. Maybe if there were some female writers working on it, things would be a little less weird.

Sumptuous costumes

With The Wrap explicitly giving the year 1897 as a setting, I expect a strong dedication to costumes. If you’re going to go period, you have to make it look good, and that’s doubly true when it’s Netflix and the BBC both working together on this. Bring on the wasp waists and menswear-inspired looks for women, please and thank you!

Hopefully, this doesn’t lead to Mina and Lucy always bringing their corsets up, to bring it back to the gender politics issue.

What do you need from Dracula this time around?