Dracula comes to London at the turn of the last century. By day he is a flamboyant American entrepreneur, by night he’s on a quest to take down a secret society.

My instinctive response to the announcement of a series about Dracula was a bored sigh. I’m not the biggest horror fan in the world and find that it tends to be derivative at the best of times (skipping creativity in favour of rehashing old themes and tropes that weren’t necessarily that great even when they were original) and making a series about not only vampires but The Vampire felt rather doomed from the start. But, there was a smidgeon of hope for originality in the setting and embracing the steampunk potential of the turn of the century.

So after watching the pilot, what do I think? To be honest I’ve got no idea. I’m not sure the show itself really knows what to think. This is not going to be one of my most coherent reviews.

On one hand it’s a bright and colourful romp. All the characters bordering on caricatures, plot bordering on ridiculous and as a whole it borders on pantomime. In tone it most reminded me of the Sherlock Holmes films, with Jonathon Rhys Meyers (The Tudors) channelling Robert Downey Jnr’s energy to play his ‘cover’ of an American entrepreneur bringing technology and charisma to stuffy British society. It’s thoroughly entertaining to watch his smug outmanoeuvring of the various lords and ladies.

On the other hand however, he’s far less interesting and engaging as the predictably dark and broody vampire. He’s not so much a complex character as a completely schizophrenic one with one half presenting interesting questions about motivations and morale standing, the other an outright murderer who slaughters not just those that have wronged him, but random women off the street as well. While the cautious friendship with journalist JOnathon Harker is intriguing on both sides, the long lingering looks at Mina Murry, the reincarnation (?) of his dead wife was considerably more tedious.

Overall the episode is a mess, dozens of clumsy questions raised and characters hinting at secrets and plans. But rather than being intrigued at how it would all fit together, the lack of elegance just left me convinced that the writers themselves were as in the dark as the audience and that they’d left things unsaid so they could work out rationales at a later date. It was vague on so many things it just felt uncertain rather than mysterious – is it an alternate history, how much ‘magic’ is there, who are the good guys? It felt like the writers were basically throwing everything at the audience and seeing what stuck.

I commented on the trailer that I was confused how something could look so expensive and so cheap all at the same time, and I remain confused (and a bit impressed). The sets, locations and costumes are all stunning, but the cast and writing all felt a little C-list. The anachronisms came so thick and fast that by half way through I was doubting whether anything was accurate and was more tempted to spend my time on wikipedia checking everything than I was watching the show. It is a slightly odd production, a joint UK/US series of 10 episodes, broadcast on NBC in the US, Sky Living in the UK and filmed in Bulgaria. It is from the head of the creator of the weird and wonderful Carnivale, but I don’t know whether this is an attempt to be more mainstream, or it’s just been dumbed down, but Dracula really didn’t draw me in the way that Carnivale did.

I was entertained watching it, but that was at least partly because I was watching it with someone else who would join me in mocking it. I think I might stick with it a little longer just because I’m so confused by it. That’s really not a very good recommendation for anyone else to watch it, but I guess it’s not an outright suggestion to avoid it either. There – now you’re as confused about it as I am!