Have the makers of Interview with the Vampire (BBC Two, Thursday, 9pm) bitten off more than is wise? The problem confronting this small-screen adaptation of the cult Anne Rice novel is that it is up against the champagne tower of camp that was Neil Jordan’s 1994 take on the tale – a movie that reached all-time peak ludicrousness by casting Tom Cruise as dandy uber-Dracula Lestat.
Outside of Ireland, Jordan’s reputation as a director is a bit up and down. He is seen as an exciting trafficker in curiosities rather than one of the greats. Still, even sceptics will credit him for coaxing out of Cruise one of his most memorable performances.
Up against that singular combination of gonzo acting and self-serious directing, the new Interview seemed doomed to disappoint. Smartly, it puts daylight between itself and the Jordan caper by slowing the pulse of the story. Doing so allows it to linger over plot points Jordan hurtled through such as Cruise running across a skyscraper roof in Mission Impossible.
Series two opens with narrator Louis (the “vampire” of the title) leaving for dead his mentor Lestat and fleeing to the old world. In what can only be described as unfortunate scheduling, Louis (Jacob Anderson) and vampire ward Claudia (Delainey Hayles, replacing Bailey Bass) arrive in Romania towards the end of the second World War. Happy times they are not. Soviet liberators are laying waste to all before them, and countryfolk cower in fear of both the marauding Red Army and mysterious monsters in the woods.
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Back in present-day Dubai, Louis relays the tale to grouchy journalist Daniel (Eric Bogosian, inheriting the part from Christian Slater). He does so in the company of his vampire lover Armand (Assad Zaman). They want to present a unified front to the reporter – their way of signalling that vampires, too, can live happily ever after (if not longer, considering their immortality).
[ From the archive - The Incredible Sulk: Interview with the Vampire review (1995)Opens in new window ]
Where’s Lestat? All will be revealed later in the season, which essentially covers that part of the movie in which Louise and Claudia go to Paris and meet Stephen Rae’s Santiago (hilarious miscasting that somehow enhanced the film).
There is nothing as ludicrous as Stephen Rae, vampire kingpin, in the TV version. Instead, the horrors of central Europe during the downfall of the Third Reich and the arrival of the Soviets are brought brutally to life.
It’s gripping, grotesque fun. But it also signals a shift in tone from season one, which made explicit the homoerotic undertones of the novel by depicting the physical and emotional side of the Louis-Lestat dynamic. No time for that amid the misery of war. Nor do we get Cruise cackling in a fright wig, and it is to the credit of this solid adaptation that it overcomes those daunting impediments to serve up a gorily watchable drama.
