Dracula and the Gothic legacy: Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat’s BBC television series

Abstract

The beginning of 2020 treated Dracula fans worldwide to a brand-new televised version of Dracula, written for the BBC by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat (the creators of the celebrated series Sherlock). While the beginning of the series seems to be following Bram Stoker’s story to some extent, it soon becomes clear the show is playing with both classic and Gothic conventions by means of updating and modernizing them. This article aims at conducting a Gothic reading of the series; i.e. identifying the Gothic paradigms, tracing elements of Bram Stoker’s literary vision and studying the constituents of the Gatiss–Moffat post-millennial Gothic reality. The subsequent sections of the study will focus on the present meaning of Gothic and its representation in the 2020 adaptation of Dracula. It will discuss the evolution of the cinematic Dracula and his arch-enemy in relation to the fixed image thriving for over a century in popular culture. Finally, Gatiss and Moffat’s vision of twenty-first century Gothic will be examined with a view to ascertain whether there is still space and need for the Gothic aesthetic on the third millennium screen.