DVD Review: Dracula Season One

 

Dracula was a show that aired on NBC (which ultimately led to its downfall) in 2013 and starred Johnathan Rhys Meyers, Jessica De Gouw, Thomas Kretschmann, Victoria Smurfit, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Nonso Anozie, and Katie McGrath. It only received a 10-episode run before it was canceled. The premise is that Dracula (Meyers) comes to London posing as an American Industrialist named Alexander Grayson to bring wireless electricity to the world. In reality, he is trying to bring down a group called The Order of the Dragon that cursed him with immortality and killed his wife. He is aided by Abraham Van Helsing (Kretschmann), whose family was also killed by the Order. While in London, Grayson falls in love with a woman named Mina Murray (played by Jessica De Gouw, whom most people will probably recognize from her appearances on the series Arrow), who also looks like his late wife. She is betrothed to Jonathan Harker (Jackson-Cohen), who is a journalist that Dracula employs to aid in his scheme to bring down the Order. 

The DVD set is a three-disc set. The extras include deleted scenes, a couple of making-of and behind-the-scenes features, an animated series that shows some of what led up to what airs in the series, and Van Helsing's lost tapes, which show him conducting experiments on vampires. 

Overall, the show is very good, and most definitely deserved a longer run. The ten-episode run was hardly enough time to set everything up and really get people invested in the show. It is one of those shows that would have been a lot better off on the CW network and could have easily had a 5+ season run had it not had to pull major network-level ratings. Much like the show Constantine, which was on NBC right around the same time, the dark nature of the show (as well as the sex) probably turned a lot of people off, and hence, the show did not get great ratings and was canceled midway through the first season. The end of the season left a lot on the table (it does seem like the final episode was reworked a bit, so the showrunners may have known ahead of time that the show was canceled) and had set the show to go in a potentially different direction. And, for fans of hers, it seems that Katie McGrath's character would have been expanded in season two had the show continued. So, even if you like the show, it will leave you feeling incomplete because not everything is resolved by the end of the season. I do, however, think it is worth watching even if you will feel a bit cheated by not seeing a clear end to the storylines.