Sherlock might not be returning any time soon, but at least creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss are working on reimagining another classic literary character for the modern age. Dracula‘s about to go before the cameras but, as we’ve become used to with shows from Moffat and Gatiss, we still don’t know much about how the duo are going to approach the immortal vampire in a fresh way.
While speaking to the Radio Times though, the writers have now teased what their big hook into the story was. When asked about the challenges of making Dracula, they revealed that it’s difficult writing a protagonist who’s irrevocably evil, especially when they’ve set themselves the task of making the Count the hero this time around.
“There’s lots of things that are challenging about Dracula,” Moffat told RT. “Having an evil lead character is actually really difficult. That’s been the main challenge I think. But how we’ve handled, that you’ll have to wait and see.”
“It’s been very exciting though,” Gatiss added, explaining their pitch to the powers that be. “Because we sort of made a promise to ourselves and the people who are making it, paying for it, that we’d make Dracula the hero of his own story, and less of a shadowy presence. And that’s a really clever idea, but we had to make good on it!”
As famed as Dracula is, those who’ve seen the classic movie adaptations or read Bram Stoker’s original novel know that the story’s told from the point of view of the group of humans who battle him – the likes of Mina and Jonathan Harker and Dr. Van Helsing. While this Dracula will stick with Stoker’s Victorian setting, we can apparently expect to see the perspective of the tale change.
The man resurrecting the iconic character for the show is Danish actor Claes Bang, while the rest of the cast includes Joanna Scanlan, Morfydd Clark, John Heffernan and Gatiss himself. From what we understand, Dracula will be structured like Sherlock, with each season consisting of three 90 minute episodes, and you can expect to sink your teeth into it in 2020.