Marc Warren stars as Dracula.

Seized with a powerful thirst, the Lord of the Undead stirs from his bed of Transylvanian dirt in Masterpiece Theatre 's chilling new adaptation of Bram Stoker's "Dracula , " airing Sunday, Feb. 11 at 9/8 p.m. CT on KET1 and Thursday, Feb. 15 at 9/8 p.m. CT on KET2.

Marc Warren ( Band of Brothers ) joins the ranks of the great screen Draculas and David Suchet ("Poirot") stars as vampire scholar Dr. Abraham Van Helsing. Also appearing are Sophia Myles ( Art School Confidential , "Miss Marple") as Lucy Westenra, the chaste victim of Dracula's first attack in England; and Stephanie Leonidas as Mina Murray, who seems certain to follow her friend Lucy into the realm of the undead.

Drawing on themes that Bram Stoker hints at darkly but dares not state outright in his 1897 novel, the plot focuses on the Victorians' anxiety about sex and syphilis particularly. The novel could not be more explicit about the invisible infection that seeps into the bloodstream and slowly turns its victims into demented fiends: which is what Dracula does to his prey and also what syphilis often produced in the era before antibiotics.

In Masterpiece Theatre 's retelling, Arthur Holmwood learns as a young man that he contracted syphilis at birth from his mother, who had been infected by his debauched father. Engaged to Lucy, he seeks out a cure to protect her from the disease. In this way, he falls into the clutches of the Brotherhood of the Undead, a London cult devoted to the worship of Dracula, although they are unaware of his true megalomania.

Holmwood dispatches solicitor Harker to Transylvania to make arrangements for Count Dracula's move to England to effect Holmwood's cure, unwittingly setting in motion a nightmarish sequence of events. Dracula fans will savor the familiar scenes and themes in this production: the horror of the count's castle; the arrival in England of Dracula's storm-tossed ship with no one aboard except the dead captain lashed to the wheel; Dracula's nighttime blood feasts on Lucy; and the peculiar rules of vampire etiquette--for example, a vampire can go only where freely invited.

One common misconception about vampires is that they can't go out in the sun. As Bram Stoker makes clear, daylight is not fatal; it's just not the vampire's preferred feeding time. However, one circumstance that is invariably fatal is the wooden stake through the heart. Or is it?

Masterpiece Theatre "Dracula" is a co-production of Granada and WGBH/Boston.