3 Star

The Victorian Monster.

Writer/director, and producer Paul Dudbridge (Horizon (TV Series), Fear the Invisible Man) takes the great story of Victor Frankenstein and drags it into the Victorian era, with this new tale of mad scientists-taxidermists. Frankenstein Legacy is one to sit next to your Hammer Horror collection.

1790, the Arctic Ocean, a whaling vessel sits nestled in amongst the pack ice. On board, Victor Frankenstein (Andrew McGillan, The Lost, DarkGame) lies gravelly ill. In his backpack is his personal diary of all his experiments and his scientific findings. As his life ebbs away, light fingers find themselves around Frankenstein’s diary and when the ship finds a dock, that diary passes into anothers hand and the results are not good. Once again, the diary finds a new eager owner, this goes on for one-hundred years, until in a seedy alley Millicent Browning (Juliet Aubrey, The Infiltrator, The Constant Gardener) get her hands on it and her story begins.

Millicent is fascinated by the reanimation of dead tissue, and she does it in true classic horror style with all the wires attached, but this is the Victorian age, she doesn’t have to wait for a lightning storm. No, now she can just throw a large switch and the life giving electricity can flow, you just have to get the voltage right. Further reading of the diary reveals the Frankenstein formula, this needs further investigation.

But upstairs life must go on, so regretfully she must interact with her son William (Matt Barber, Bert & Dickie, Downton Abbey (TV Series)) and her daughter Clara (Katie Sheridan, Firecracker, Give Them Wings), but it is always a pleasure to see the true love of her life, her husband Colonel Robert Browning (Philip Martin Brown, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Bounty). Millicent disapproves of William working for a living, even if it is as a doctor at the asylum of which she is a trustee. Clara is a lady of leisure, and planning on spending a month away with one of her friends, which leaves the wheelchair bound love of her life.

Robert’s health is failing, but Millicent does not want to be parted from him. In this day and age, powerful drug are readily available, for better or worse. This leads to a tragedy, which Millicent must rectify by all mean necessary. This is when an age-old problem rears its ugly head and bodies start going missing from graveyards and else where. This must be investigated, welcome in the new detective duo of William and nurse Liza (Alexandra Afryea, Infinite, EastEnders (TV Series)).