I don't really have to go over the story of Dracula again, do I? Oh, all right. Dracula, an ancient vampire, connives to move to England, where the modern men of the 1890s have long foresworn the knowledge which would thwart or threaten him; unfortunately for him, one of his prospective victims calls in an old mentor wise in both the ways of the natural and the supernatural. Conflict results.

This is a 1977 BBC TV version of the story, shown in America as part of the PBS Great Performances series. Louis Jourdan essays the role of Dracula, while the role of the vampire-hunting Van Helsing falls to character actor Frank Finlay. Both men, perhaps realizing that they would be fighting the portrayals most prevalent in the popular mind at the time - Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing - give earnest, understated, almost nonchalant performances. Sadly, this works better for Van Helsing than Dracul, as Jourdan makes an attractive but ultimately unmenacing enemy. Many, though, tout the strength of this performance. Your mileage may vary.

The production is sturdy and workmanlike, which is not to say it's bad - far from it. Though there is a certain economy at work - Mina and Lucy are now sisters in a familial sense as well as spiritual, and two of the doomed Lucy's suitors have been melded into one person - this miniseries is more faithful to Stoker's novel than not, and is generally credited as being the most faithful, thus far .

There is a percentage of state-of-the-art video effects circa 1977: solarization, infra-red (presaging similar psychedelic sequences in the 1979 Badham Dracula), slow motion and one instance of poorly-considered animation. These lend a certain charm to the proceedings, and it must be admitted that the most shuddery of the pieces are handled very well: especially the stalking of the vampiric Lucy in a graveyard, and the standoff between Mina, Van Helsing and the Brides of Dracula in a dark Transylvanian forest. Moments such as these and its overall faith to the source material made this a cult item on the video gray market for years.

The BBC takes good care of its archive materials; done in the typical video-for-interiors film-for-exteriors Beeb style, both sources are fresh and unmarred as if they were shot yesterday, with deep blacks and a muted but thoroughly Victorian color palette. The audio was recorded for TV in the 1970s.

This is an absolutely no-frills disc; some writings on the Web indicate that the British version didn't even have a chapter select menu. This version does, if only accessible through a slightly awkward menu path. There are commercials for other BBC classic literature adaptations (featuring a bunch of familiar faces) and the BBC America cable channel to start things off, however.