Post by fenris on Feb 24, 2014 2:07:06 GMT
Young Dracula, episodes #5.1 'Fight or Flight', #5.2 'Who's the Daddy?', #5.3 'Flesh and Blood', #5.4 'Once Bitten, Twice Shy', #5.5 'Warning Shadows' and #5.6 'The Enemy Within'.
SPOILER WARNING
I suspect the main reason it's been confirmed the fifth season of Young Dracula (currently airing on CBBC) is to be the last is because CBBC executives believe the main protagonists in childrens' series should be in the same age group as the intended audience, thus allowing them to crucially double-up as viewer-identification figures. When Young Dracula debuted in 2006, Gerran Howell (who portrays Vlad) was a chubby-cheeked pre-teen and Claire Thomas (Ingrid) a mere slip of a girl. But eight years on, Howell is a darkly handsome young man sporting a neck tattoo, while Thomas has matured into an alluring Goth fantasy pin-up.
Based on the first few episodes, the fifth season seemed to be a substantial backwards step. The show has visually undergone a noticeable budget reduction, probably for hardnosed business reasons (why spend more than the bare minimum on a show that isn't coming back?). Every instalment so far has been a bottle episode, set almost entirely within the Draculas' home of Garside Grange, with little or no location shooting. Presumably also for cost-cutting reasons, many of the regular/recurring characters from previous seasons have been either written out inbetween Seasons Four and Five (Wolfie, headteacher Alex McCauley, and mother-and-son vampire slayers the Van Helsings) or killed off, off-screen (Erin and Ramanga). The departure of McCauley and Erin is a particular blow, as the slow-burning attraction between McCauley and the Count was one of the highlights of the third & fourth seasons, while Erin (an inexperienced slayer who became Vlad's lover and closest ally, only to turn against him when he ignored her dying wish - following a fatal injury - and turned her into a vampire) was one of the most important characters in the series' mythology.
McCauley was written out by having the Count close down Garside Grange as a school. Thus, while Seasons Three & Four had the corridors filled with pupils milling about, the fifth season is about a disfunctional family rattling around in a very large and empty mansion. It feels very similar to the show's first two seasons. And that's not the only way that Young Dracula has regressed. When the series returned in 2011 (having initially been cancelled in 2008) the producers knew that the children who had originally watched the show had since become teenagers, and so the revived Young Dracula had to grow up as well. As a result, Seasons Three and Four were surprisingly dark, complex, and eye-openingly violent. Quite simply, it wasn't a kid's show anymore, and could have easily been scheduled in the Saturday evening slot that has been home to Robin Hood, Merlin and New Who. However, it seems that someone in authority at the Beeb has finally noticed how dark & violent this supposed 'childrens' series' is, and has ordered the producers and writers to rein the fifth season in and make it more of a traditional CBBC production (for example, second episode 'Who's the Daddy' was a parade of dandruff and snot jokes).
Seemingly part of this attempt to soften the show has been the revelation that Vlad is actually half-human, the result of a brief fling that the Count had with a teenage Goth chick at a music festival in Whitby in 1996. But following the news in the fourth season that the Count had unknowingly fathered a son, Malik, due to an affair with his sister-in-law three hundred years ago, the retconning of Vlad's parentage falls flat and simply feels like one soap opera-style twist too many.
However... after six episodes, darkness is starting to creep back into the show. It's been revealed to the audience (but not to the Draculas themselves) that although recurring villain Ramanga and his daughter Adze are dead, his sons are plotting revenge. And we've also learnt that for two hundred years the Count has been safekeeping a box containing a slumbering Lovecraftian entity that is now beginning to stir... and this prospect terrifies him. So while Young Dracula isn't the show it once was, all might not be lost.
SPOILER WARNING
I suspect the main reason it's been confirmed the fifth season of Young Dracula (currently airing on CBBC) is to be the last is because CBBC executives believe the main protagonists in childrens' series should be in the same age group as the intended audience, thus allowing them to crucially double-up as viewer-identification figures. When Young Dracula debuted in 2006, Gerran Howell (who portrays Vlad) was a chubby-cheeked pre-teen and Claire Thomas (Ingrid) a mere slip of a girl. But eight years on, Howell is a darkly handsome young man sporting a neck tattoo, while Thomas has matured into an alluring Goth fantasy pin-up.
Based on the first few episodes, the fifth season seemed to be a substantial backwards step. The show has visually undergone a noticeable budget reduction, probably for hardnosed business reasons (why spend more than the bare minimum on a show that isn't coming back?). Every instalment so far has been a bottle episode, set almost entirely within the Draculas' home of Garside Grange, with little or no location shooting. Presumably also for cost-cutting reasons, many of the regular/recurring characters from previous seasons have been either written out inbetween Seasons Four and Five (Wolfie, headteacher Alex McCauley, and mother-and-son vampire slayers the Van Helsings) or killed off, off-screen (Erin and Ramanga). The departure of McCauley and Erin is a particular blow, as the slow-burning attraction between McCauley and the Count was one of the highlights of the third & fourth seasons, while Erin (an inexperienced slayer who became Vlad's lover and closest ally, only to turn against him when he ignored her dying wish - following a fatal injury - and turned her into a vampire) was one of the most important characters in the series' mythology.
McCauley was written out by having the Count close down Garside Grange as a school. Thus, while Seasons Three & Four had the corridors filled with pupils milling about, the fifth season is about a disfunctional family rattling around in a very large and empty mansion. It feels very similar to the show's first two seasons. And that's not the only way that Young Dracula has regressed. When the series returned in 2011 (having initially been cancelled in 2008) the producers knew that the children who had originally watched the show had since become teenagers, and so the revived Young Dracula had to grow up as well. As a result, Seasons Three and Four were surprisingly dark, complex, and eye-openingly violent. Quite simply, it wasn't a kid's show anymore, and could have easily been scheduled in the Saturday evening slot that has been home to Robin Hood, Merlin and New Who. However, it seems that someone in authority at the Beeb has finally noticed how dark & violent this supposed 'childrens' series' is, and has ordered the producers and writers to rein the fifth season in and make it more of a traditional CBBC production (for example, second episode 'Who's the Daddy' was a parade of dandruff and snot jokes).
Seemingly part of this attempt to soften the show has been the revelation that Vlad is actually half-human, the result of a brief fling that the Count had with a teenage Goth chick at a music festival in Whitby in 1996. But following the news in the fourth season that the Count had unknowingly fathered a son, Malik, due to an affair with his sister-in-law three hundred years ago, the retconning of Vlad's parentage falls flat and simply feels like one soap opera-style twist too many.
However... after six episodes, darkness is starting to creep back into the show. It's been revealed to the audience (but not to the Draculas themselves) that although recurring villain Ramanga and his daughter Adze are dead, his sons are plotting revenge. And we've also learnt that for two hundred years the Count has been safekeeping a box containing a slumbering Lovecraftian entity that is now beginning to stir... and this prospect terrifies him. So while Young Dracula isn't the show it once was, all might not be lost.