Yes, NBC's Dracula is yet another vampire show — but you should watch it anyway

The first episode of NBC's supernatural drama takes great pains to distinguish itself from Twilight and True Blood

Dracula
(Image credit: (NBC Universal, Inc.))

It's hard not to see NBC's newest dramatic offering, Dracula, as a very belated attempt to cash in on the once-dominant worldwide vampire frenzy, which has since given way to zombies and witches. Dracula's lateness means that the show's creative minds will have to work hard to differentiate it from the HBO hit True Blood, the CW's The Vampire Diaries, and the blockbuster Twilight series. Even outside of the most visible recent entries in the genre, we've been oversaturated: Tim Burton's Dark Shadows, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, and new installments in the vampires vs. werewolves series Underworld have all rolled out in just the last three years.

That's a lot of sharp fangs and dripping blood in a relatively small window of time. So why would NBC bring back Dracula now, just as other networks' vampires are retreating back into their coffins? Well, the first offering of the new, 10-episode series Dracula offers a clue and a pleasant surprise: There might actually still be new stories left to tell about the count. It's too early to say if this will translate into a season's worth of thrills, but the choice to abandon the vampires-hiding-in-modern-day trope is a wise one — and a sign that there might be room for a little new blood in the genre after all.

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Jessica Jardine is from Northern California and has written for The Onion's A.V. Club, FILTER, BUST, Backstage, and Metromix.com. She is also a performer at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Los Angeles and owns a Calico Persian cat named Beyoncé.