Jonathan Rhys Meyers brings Dracula to life in Dublin crypt

This must be what it was like watching a DVD in ancient times, I think, as we await the premiere of a new television drama about Dracula on a screen overlooked by the Gothic arches and stained glass of Christ Church cathedral.

If you are wondering about the venue for such a launch, they were using the crypts as the atmospheric setting for various media interviews to be broadcast later.

The screening begins with Jonathan Rhys Meyers, in a T-shirt and suit jacket, clutching an old leather-bound book – Dracula, by local boy Bram Stoker. He reads passages in a theatrical baritone before bowing.

I can’t tell you too much because I signed papers saying I wouldn’t (I possibly also granted Sky power of attorney).

But I'll risk saying that it's a high-budget, Sky/NBC co-production shot in Budapest by the makers of Downton Abbey and that Meyers plays the latest version of the toothy terror.

Afterwards Tom Dunne invites actors Rhys Meyers, Victoria Smurfit, Jessica De Gouw and Oliver Jackson-Cohen, to sit in a row alongside Sky’s head of drama Cameron Roach for a Q&A. Sky have focused a lot of energy on the Irish market recently. Dunne comments on how Irish the cast is. They had, says Rhys Meyers, “a lovely ‘paddy corner’”.

Then there’s a bit of talk about the golden age of telly until eventually Dunne says “I’d like you all to come join us in the crypt for a drink.” He smiles. “That’s not something you get to say every day.”

Dracula is on Sky Living on October 31st