Well that was something pretty special, wasn’t it? I’m asking you that because if you haven’t watched BBC’s three-part Dracula miniseries I strongly recommend that you go and watch it now as there are bound to be spoilers in the following review and there are a lot of surprises I wouldn’t want to ruin for you and because I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy it.

So what’s so good about it? Pretty much everything. The script is sharp and witty - especially when the two central characters of Dracula and Agatha van Helsing (Whoops! First spoiler!) are verbally sparring. There are times of arch humour and times of horror and fear. There are times when you think you know what’s going on and thern you get completely thrown. Performances are top notch - again, particularly from Claes Bang and Dolly Wells as those same characters. Production values are consistently very high, especially the photography which is, in places, breathtakingly beautiful. What is remarkable, though, is that, between them, Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat have taken such a well-known character and breathed new unlife into him.

Throughout the series Gatiss’s love of the horror films he grew up with shines through the story he and Moffat weave. Certainly it owes more to Hammer than to Stoker and for those of us who know both there are references enough to make things familiar and to raise a smile of recognition. More often than not, though, those references are used to wrong-foot us - especially in the climactic scene of the final episode when, for a moment we get a flash of a Cushing-Lee denouement that takes a very different course. Surprising plot-twists are here in abundance. 

Are there moments when things don’t quite work? Of course - in this kind of series, based on fantasy but portrayed in the unwaveringly realistic medium of television there are bound to be. I can’t be the only person to have watched Dracula climb out of the skin of a wolf and walk around in the scud for several minutes, only to see him in the next scene fully clothed in his silk-lined cape and posh suit to have thought, “Do they have emergency tailors in Wallachia?”. I also thought that the character of Mina Murray was written in a way that portrayed her love for Jonathon Harker as a form of stupidity that evolution should have written out of our DNA when our ancestors were rather hairier than we are now though, of course, there are precursors to both of these in the Hammer Dracula movies.

That’s two things. In four and a half hours of television. That should tell you how good this was. At its heart this version of Dracula is a story of love and redemption. It takes the standard tropes of the vampire stories - the crosses, the sunlight, the boxes of earth - and tells a different and quite uplifting story with them. This is clearly written by somebody(s) who love this source material and want to treat it with respect while doing something new with it. 

And that’s what I want as a viewer. I don’t want to see the same story told over and over again, whether it’s endlessly recycled domestic dramas or yet another serial killer leaving clues for the police to follow. Wrong-foot me. Take my expectations and turn them on their heads. Tell me a familiar story in new and different ways. 

Have you watched it now? If so, I suggest to you that this version of Dracula is a love story and what redeems Dracula in the end is the discovery of love. For me, it’s the best version of the Dracula story I have ever seen.