Dimension 20’s Coffin Run is a nearly flawless Dracula adaptation

polygon.com:

Stories, especially beloved stories, have a tendency to bleed past their borders and escape their original bodies. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is among many well-loved works that have long since taken on new shapes, shifting forms constantly. The epistolary tale of vampires has hundreds upon hundreds of adaptations, with one domineering throughline: Stoker’s lasting characterization of the elegant, verbose, vampiric count himself.

Given the breadth and variety of the landscape, it can be difficult, at this point, to iterate on Dracula in a way that feels fresh — which is why Dimension 20’s Coffin Run was, and continues to be, such a delight.

Coffin Run, a Dungeons & Dragons actual-play series, premiered in the summer of 2022. The six-episode run, described on Dropout’s website as “a tale as old as many lifetimes,” was helmed by storyteller and game master Jasmine Bhullar and starred Zac Oyama, Erika Ishii, Isabella Roland, and Carlos Luna. Coffin Run emerged from Bhullar’s love of Stoker’s novel, she told CBR in 2022, as well as comedic source material like Young Frankenstein and What We Do in the Shadows.

The cast of the series shines as archetypical members of Dracula’s retinue, brought together to ferry the Count (who sustains undeath-threatening injuries at the top of the series) home to Castle Dracula in his coffin. Oyama plays Squing, a Nosferatu-like vampire who is Dracula’s “firstborn,” turned as a child and preserved forever. Roland plays Dr. Aleksandr Astrovsky, a brash, invigorated mad scientist figure. Luna plays Wetzel, a young human who lives as Dracula’s plaything in hope of becoming a vampire himself. And Ishii plays May Wong, one of Dracula’s vampire brides, who used to be an actress in New York.

Coffin