WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for BBC's Dracula.
While the BBC's adaptation of Dracula sinks dramatically in quality the nearer it gets to its third and final episode, it certainly gets off to a strong start. The slow build-up of tension as Jonathan Harker, the Count's English solicitor, realizes he's trapped like a rat in his ageless client's castle pays off in bloody and bombastic fashion. The episode also does well capturing the leering, gothic essence of Bram Stoker's classic novel while hamming it up with plenty of horror fixtures: buzzing flies, reanimating corpses and the odd jump scare.
Dracula himself is far more of a charmer than Stoker's original fiendish Count; unafraid of dropping heavy-handed quips about his true undead status: "Oh, I don't drink... wine." Winking lines like this are intended purely for an audience well-versed in vampire lore by now, as opposed to his clueless guest.
The most radical change the miniseries makes in its first installment, however, happens to be its best. In the novel, Abraham Van Helsing, the archnemesis of the Count, is an older gentleman with a exhaustive list of doctorates to his name. He's also a staunch Catholic, bringing together the two greatest weapons against the apex of supernatural evil (other than a sharpened piece of wood): God and reason.
The novel also has Harker recount his sorry tale by way of letters to his beloved fianceé, Mina. In the BBC version, Harker instead tells of his traumatic time in the castle to two nuns in a convent he's recovering in after making an improbable escape. One of them is silent and avoids his gaze but the other, Sister Agatha, who leads the debriefing, is talkative and highly inquisitive. Right off the bat (pun intended), we're told that she's no ordinary prim and proper Sister as she opens her line of inquiry by asking an emaciated Harker if the contagion he's ended up with was a result of him having sex with Dracula.
As the interview goes on, it also becomes clear that Sister Agatha knows a great deal about vampires -- or, at least, the legends of them -- than she perhaps should. Those more familiar with the character of Van Helsing might start to pick up on her real identity sooner, but the Count's own realization later in the episode -- bellowing out her full name at the gates of the convent after tasting her blood -- makes for a great, cheesy reveal.
Agatha is vast improvement on most of the previous reinventions the famed vampire hunter has undergone over the years. Some of these simply fade into the background like in 1979's Nosferatu The Vampyr, while others come across almost as bizarrely bloodthirsty as the monster he fights, like Anthony Hopkins' portrayal of Van Helsing in 1992's Bram Stoker's Dracula. And the less said about the pilgrim-hatted Hugh Jackman deviation in the movie Van Helsing, the better.
It's likely that co-creator Steven Moffat, who has repeatedly struggled to present female characters in a strong light during his tenure on both Doctor Who and Sherlock, intended the gender-bent twist to serve as exactly that -- a mere twist -- more than a deliberate feminist statement. The episodes that follow certainly go some way to prove this, too.
Still, the scene in which Agatha's all-important surname is revealed is one of the best Dracula versus Van Helsing confrontations to date, and is laced with empowering undertones by virtue of the gender-swap. It begins with Agatha sussing out that the large black dog that is growling at the convent's gate is one of the Count's rumored disguises. Rumbled, he goes for shock tactics: forcing his body to emerge from the literal belly of the beast in a mess of tangled limbs and bodily fluids. He stands, naked and blood-stained, before her but Agatha uses her scientific mind to remain coolly detached from the situation. She's joined by the rest of her Sisters, armed with stakes, who she reveals to have been well-prepared for Dracula's arrival.
However, science isn't the only reason Agatha is unfazed by the monster at her door. Dracula's existence, we learn, is actually a source of solace to the nun, who has been going through a crisis of faith. Knowing that otherworldly evil of the most devilish kind is real confirms to her that the opposite must also be real. It's the perfect way to consolidate the character's two competing interests.
While this rich inner narrative is playing out, Agatha also lands some of the best lines in the episode. The most memorable of these comes when Dracula -- desperate to provoke one of the Sisters into inviting him inside -- resorts to intimidating hisses and withering belittlement of the women standing fast against him. Agatha gives as good as she gets: goading him to lick her scattered drops of blood from the cobblestones to prove that, like the animal he climbed his way out of, he's really just a dog looking for a bone. Despite all of his pomposity and power, the world's most advanced vampire is still nothing more than a slave to instinct. Agatha, on the other hand, is "[his] worst fear -- an educated woman with a crucifix."
Their rigid defense against the worst kind of male aggressor holds until the very end, too, as it is Jonathan Harker -- a Nostferatu-like husk of his former living self -- who breaks; selling them out to let Dracula in. This ensures that, though the nuns' victory is unfortunately short-lived, Agatha Van Helsing's squad of plucky women of God at least go out with their habited heads held high. (And then... rolling.)
Agatha's assessment of Dracula's addictive nature holds true in the second episode, too, as the vampire's lack of self-control is demonstrated in the confined space of a ship where the pair engage in a classic game of wits, leading to an explosive ending. Agatha may not thwart the immortal Count then and there, but for a time, he'd certainly met his match.
Executive produced by Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat, Sue Vertue and Ben Irving, Dracula stars John Heffernan, Dolly Wells, Joanna Scanlan, Sacha Dhawan, Jonathan Aris, Morfydd Clark, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett and Claes Bang as Count Dracula. The miniseries debuted on BBC One Jan. 1 and is now streaming on Netflix.