So, Mr Du Lac - how long have you been dead?

Continuing my trip up Empire's top 20 TV of 2023

#11 :  Interview With The Vampire

Anne Rice's 1976 novel is arguably the single most definitive work of vampire fiction outside Bram Stoker's Dracula. But it isn't until this year that her lavish gothic romance has truly made the transition to the screen. After Neil Jordan's 1994 film, while great, straight-washed the entire story, it took nearly thirty years for Rolin Jones to step in and restore the queer love affair that is the tale's bloody, beating heart. Jacob Anderson and Sam Reid are mesmerising as immortals Louis and Lestat, in an adaptation that makes core changes to the narrative (adding a new element of race to the central duo, and moving it up 200 years to the 19th century) but manages to be perfectly faithful to the spirit and intent of the original novel – with production design to die for (sometimes literally), and an abundance of awful people having their life blood leeched away. This may have come to the UK almost a full year after its US debut, but Interview With The Vampire proved more than worth the wait.

I have a confession here - I've never seen the film. How bad is that? I've just never fancied it - and the same is pretty much true of this, but here we are.

Hmmm - it's an interesting one. The first thing to say is that it looks absolutely fabulous - a lot of money has been spent on making this look very impressive indeed in terms of both location and costume. And it's well acted - you buy the whole vampire business between Louis (Jacob Anderson) and Lestat (Sam Reid).

But, I feel I have to disagree with Empire when it describes them as "mesmerising" because I was anything but. I have to admit to not really being a fan of vampires - anything that can't go out during the day doesn't seem like they're really set for world domination. They're also very mopey - even though Lestat seems to be living the life, he doesn't seem very happy about it. 

So, I'm afraid to say I gave up on this after two episodes - I suspect from what Empire said (interestingly, it's not on The Guardian's list) that if you like the book then you'll like this but I just didn't care. I was reminded of my reaction to  The Underground Railroad - I knew a lot of people loved the book, (as far as I knew) it was well adapted, it looked fabulous and I could see there was a lot to love about it with strong characters that you could buy into. But unfortunately I just didn't care what happened to anyone in this - sorry! However, I suspect that there are probably plenty of people who will like this that totally missed it when it came out - I was very surprised to see this was on iPlayer because I'd heard absolutely nothing about it.

#12 - Yeah, this was good with a very strong cast
#10 - I enjoyed this

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