For a camp and amusing spin on the legacy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, look no further than the latest offering from BBC America, Demons, which debuted earlier this month and airs every Saturday at 9pm.
The show focuses on the strange new world greeting Luke Rutherford (Christian Cooke), a regular London teen who just happens to be descended from Van Helsing, the legendary vampire killer of Dracula fame. Introduced to his lineage and destiny by his dead father’s best friend Rupert Galvin (Philip Glenister), Luke is thrust into the the capital’s dark underworld of half-lives, monsters and in-humans that lie deep beneath the streets of modern-day London.
Luke must lift the family mantle as a warrior against the supernatural entities behind every myth and legend from vampires to werewolves while maintaining an ordinary life of school exams, parties, driving tests and keeping it all from his mother.
To train Luke in his quest, Galvin calls on the beautiful but icy cold Mina Harker (Zoe Tapper), a blind concert pianist with a history – who is also the foremost authority on the undesirable entities preying on humanity. The sinister and mouldering Father Simeon (Richard Wilson) is Luke’s other counsellor on the lore and myth behind the creatures he faces.
Luke’s first opponent is the villainous Gladiolus Thrip (Mackenzie Crook), a “type 12” sinister vampire with a burning hatred for the Van Helsing line. The list of terrifying adversaries grow with the cockroach-munching “type 5” called Redlip (Martin Hancock), a “type 9” child-snatching demon-in-angel’s clothing called Gilgamel (Rick English), and the half-man half-rat Mr. Tibbs (Kevin McNally), who bears a deep and personal grudge against a member of the team.
It’s all good fun, well acted and written, and though the special effects budget is clearly just a fraction of what a similar American series might boast, it’s still thoroughly entertaining stuff.
