So I’ve been watching a lot of Count Duckula lately and, not to be dramatic, but I’m beginning to suspect this show is a cursed object. Not in a creepy VHS-from-the-attic kind of way, but in the sense that it might be an ancient riddle disguised as children’s television—like a Lovecraftian artefact covered in fart jokes and broccoli references.
Because first off: is Count Duckula even a vampire? The intro says yes. The lore says yes. He was resurrected by lightning and incantations, with a whole Transylvanian ritual, dark towers and bat silhouettes and everything. But then the ritual goes wrong (they used ketchup instead of blood—it’s a whole thing), and now he’s vegetarian and pacifistic and really into showbiz. He hangs out in sunlight like it’s nothing. Vampires around him burst into ash the second the sun’s out, but he’s chilling on the terrace sipping tomato juice like it’s brunch. Garlic? Not an issue. Mirror reflection? Fully intact. But Von Goosewing, bless his persistent little goose heart, still hunts him with the blind zeal of a man who has never once asked a follow-up question.
And then there’s the lineage problem. Igor, the perpetually disappointed butler who wants nothing more than for Duckula to go back to his murderous, bloodthirsty roots, keeps talking about the Count’s ancestors. His great-great-grandfather, the legendary Lord of the Night; his uncle who could decapitate a man just by raising an eyebrow. But Duckula, this Duckula, was explicitly resurrected. So is he genetically descended from them or just the latest reboot of the same haunted soul in a duck-shaped casing? Is this a legacy role, like Batman, or more like reincarnation through botched necromancy? Are all Duckulas just different builds of the same firmware?
Now enter the castle: a transdimensional nightmare funhouse that teleports from location to location using a TARDIS-like system that’s somehow powered by a cuckoo clock. Not just any cuckoo clock, though. The cuckoo clock. The cuckoo clock that houses Dimitri and Sviatoslav, two bat-shaped slapstick gremlins who exist to make puns and raise questions. For some reason, this clock is the absolute linchpin of the castle’s teleportation tech. No cuckoo, no travel. And it returns to Transylvania at dawn like it’s on magical airline autopilot. Which is wild. Because that means some duck vampire household figured out not just space-warping technology, but targeted, scheduled dimension-hopping and then decided to anchor the whole system to an ornamental bit of wall furniture. Incredible.
But here’s the real kicker, the part that truly breaks my last grip on reality: Igor.
Igor has been serving the Duckula family for thousands of years. He says this. Frequently. Casually. Like it’s just an HR fact. “Back when your great-great-grandfather was feasting on monks…” and “During the Siege of Antioch, your forebear was a real delight.” Which would be fine—expected, even—if he were, like, a vampire. Or a ghoul. Or an immortal goat-witch. But he’s just a guy. A goose, technically. A deeply goth goose with a taste for the macabre. He’s not undead. He ages. He sighs. He makes tea. He does not exhibit any signs of supernatural durability except that he has somehow been around for millennia and never even explains how.
There is no "why" given. He’s just always been here, like mildew or ennui. There are no hints about him being cursed, or bound by dark magic, or built in a lab by necromancers. He’s just... Igor. Eternal Igor. The one fixed point in the show’s swirling chaos. Honestly, at this point, I don’t think Count Duckula is meant to take place in any fixed dimension. It’s a metaphysical state. It’s a cosmic slipstream populated by creatures that run on cartoon logic and delayed punchlines. One minute you’re in 1890, the next there’s a joke about Duran Duran. The laws of time and biology have no jurisdiction here.
So to recap:
Count Duckula is maybe a vampire but also maybe just a duck in a cape who was microwaved by magic.
His family tree is a combination of inherited evil and Frankenstein rules.
His castle is a TARDIS built by lunatics and run by a pun-delivering cuckoo clock.
Igor is immortal and no one’s going to explain that.
Time is fake, space is fake, blood is ketchup, and I think I love it.
This show is what happens when you throw gothic horror, British sketch comedy, existential metaphysics, and hand puppets into a blender and then animate whatever leaks out. It’s absurd. It’s brilliant. And if I think about it too long, I’m going to start drawing diagrams and yelling about duck necromancy in a gas station parking lot.
Anyway, five stars. Highly recommend.