Inviting either a feminist critique of the trappings of horror literature, or just a lot of really dumb puns (Sucks In The City barges immediately to mind), NBC has given a pilot order to Brides, a new supernatural drama about the un-lives of a trio of modern day “Brides of Dracula.” The series is a new collaboration between Archie Comics’ Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and superhero TV show mastermind Greg Berlanti, who previously worked together on the Archie TV series currently in development at the CW.
The Brides (known in the original text as “the sisters”) date back to Bram Stoker’s original Dracula, where they seduced and fed upon the hapless Jonathan Harker, making the story’s sexual subtext as explicit as 19th century literature was going to allow. Since then, they’ve showed up in most of the major adaptations of Stoker’s novel, usually as titillating window dressing, or maybe as an occasional physical threat. This new series, though, would reimagine the characters as actual people, living in New York more than a century after Dracula’s defeat.
The “hot gothic soap drama” is being pitched as a family drama about “a trio of strong, diverse female leads,” who’ll do anything to protect their positions, power, and sisters. In other words, this sounds like it could be the feminist, sexy, family drama supernatural soap opera—about blood-sucking monsters who really care about each other—that subscribers to All Of The Things In One Place magazine have been clamoring for for years.