‘Dracula’ Episode 2 recap: What happened in ‘Blood Vessel’?

The BBC’s new Dracula series continued in the UK tonight.

Based on Bram Stoker’s classic Gothic novel, the three new feature-length TV movies have been written by Sherlock creators Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat.

Danish actor Claes Bang (Borgen) leads the cast as Count Dracula, alongside Joanna Scanlan (No Offence), Dolly Wells (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) and John Heffernan (The Crown).

Here’s a plot recap for the second episode, which aired at 9pm on Thursday 2nd January 2020 on BBC One:

To all appearances, the decrepit Russian ship The Demeter is a perfectly ordinary vessel…

But its motley collection of passengers – including a German duchess, an Indian scientist and an English lord, his beautiful bride and their resentful manservant – also boasts a strange cargo: fifty boxes of mouldering Transylvanian soil.

Shrouded in a mysterious fog, the Demeter sets sail for Whitby, England, but the voyage is ill-starred from the beginning.

Death stalks the ship and before long the crew of the Demeter are locked in a deadly game of cat and mouse with Count Dracula.

Can any of them stop the ravenous vampire before he reaches England and sows the seeds of his unholy blood-cult in fresh ground?

As the old saying goes: ’The dead travel fast’…

The complete Sherlock DVD box set is available on Amazon.