My Review of Dracula's "The Rules Of The Beast"

Written by Mark Gatiss & Steven Moffat
Directed by Jonny Campbell

Dracula (to Jonathan): "As I've been trying to tell people for centuries, you are what you eat."

It's been three years since Sherlock came to a rather unsatisfying end but that alone was never going to deter Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss from teaming up to give us a rather fresh-ish update on a certain Count and with the first of a three part series, this certainly got the appetite going.

Anyways not to bore too much but the story mostly remains the same with a few classic Moffat/Gatiss writing tropes thrown into the mix. Jonathan Harker (John Heffernan) finds sanctuary in a convent with the rather sharp Sister Agatha (Dolly Wells) getting him to recount the events that led to his current predicament.

In flashbacks we see the shy lawyer rock up in Transylvania to stay with Count Dracula (Claes Bang) who as the episode progresses becomes rather younger while the opposite effect happens to Harker. When Jonathan realises what's happened to him, he tries to escape, encounters some brides before becoming one himself and yeah, everything else goes to hell for the poor guy as the episode comes to a face ripping conclusion.

There's always been a homoerotic interplay with Dracula and Harker and this episode leaned heavier into that than other iterations have done in the past. It even got to the point where Sister Agatha even asked if Harker and Dracula had actually had sex with each other but Jonathan unfortunately didn't make it out of the episode alive and Dracula's attentions soon turned to Mina (Morfydd Clark), the latter of whom I found to be quite weak as a character in spite of her attempts to humanise her would be husband before his death.

In terms of highlights, I can definitely see why Moffat and Gatiss went with Claes Bang as he's a revelation in the role but I think Dolly Wells might have upstaged him and that was even before we got to the reveal of her being a gender swapped Van Helsing. I'm not surprised a male character got gender swapped here but it did work for me as did the horror, gore and overall attempts of dark humour to boot.

- I see we got some references to both Sherlock Holmes and Clara Oswald in this episode. am I shocked that we'd get a hint of Mina being bisexual? Of course not, lol.
- Joanna Scanlan was somewhat wasted as Mother Superior, even if she did get a decent death scene when Dracula got into the convent.
- The ratings for this were under four million on BBC1. Again, like Doctor Who, I was expecting more for this.
- Expect the next two episodes Blood Vessel and The Dark Compass over the next two nights.

The Rules Of The Beast kicks this miniseries off to a good start. It's not hard to spot both Moffat and Gatiss's fingerprints all over it and that can be both a good and a bad thing to a point. Still though, the leads were excellent, the humour didn't jar and the horror was excellent. This should bode well for the remaining two episodes.

Rating: 8 out of 10