Oct 24, 2013 3 min read

There’s something daring about the new NBC limited series “Dracula,” although at first, it will seem deceptively old-fashioned.

The British-American co-production, premiering at 10 p.m. today, stars Jonathan Rhys Meyers (“The Tudors”) as Vlad Tepes, otherwise known as Vlad the Impaler. He’s been re-awakened with a heaping helping of fresh human blood by Abraham Van Helsing (Thomas Kretschmann, “The Pianist”) and has barged his way into proper Victorian London society, posing as an American tycoon.

Although Van Helsing is Dracula’s vampire-hunting enemy in Bram Stoker’s novel, for now at least, he has revived him so they can both wreak vengeance on the Order of the Dragon, a group of select nobles who centuries before murdered Dracula’s wife and Van Helsing’s family.

“Dracula” takes liberties with history, as well as with Stoker’s novel. But that’s not anywhere near as daring as how series creators Cole Haddon and Daniel Knauf have fashioned “Dracula” as an homage to Victorian melodrama.

The often stilted dialogue, punctuated by lustful stares and blood-hungry glowering, may be off-putting at first because we’re so used to actors in period pieces speaking in a present-day vernacular. Grayson/Dracula and his pals sound closer to characters from a ’30s film than a 21st century TV series. But over time, as our modern ears adjust to the melodramatically declarative style, the antiquated dialogue enhances the other-worldly tone of the series.

The show’s setup provides the writers with a way to offer both a through-story and more narrowly focused incidents for individual episodes as Grayson picks off his enemies one by one. At times, it just seems as though Grayson is finding ways to ruin (or kill) his new business rivals, but soon enough, we see the bigger picture, that they are all members of the group responsible for burning Dracula’s wife alive centuries before.

Other characters in Stoker make the transition to the TV series, but with minor adjustments. Mina Murray (Jessica De Gouw, “Arrow”) is not a school mistress in the TV series but rather a young medical student and the daughter of a famed surgeon.

The writers walk a fine line with characterization in the series. At first, many of key figures are almost like caricatures, one-dimensional and seeming to lack nuance. Yet, as the series continues, many of them do evolve.

As we learn more about Dracula, and about his victims, the needle of our moral compass shifts. At first, we see Dracula as a monster, a blood-thirsty beast capable of ripping throats open in a flash. He continues to be an ornery cuss, but we soon cut him some slack – first when we learn about his wife and then when we meet the evil targets of his vengeance. Drac may be a bad guy, but he’s not necessarily the baddest guy.

And in the case of “Dracula,” that’s pretty good.