Penny Dreadful

Penny Dreadful doesn't get enough credit. It is a perfect show. I'm obsessed with it. I didn't find it until a couple years ago and I have already watched every season twice. I have searched for another show like this but there are none. Especially not the series to follow in the Penny Dreadful family. It is written so poetically, like a book from the same time. The sets are beautiful and capture every detail from the 19th century. Every actor played their parts perfectly, especially Eva Green. It is a dark, gothic story that is profoundly unsettling. I hope the creators can find the same magic again and create a show that is as bewitching as this.

I'm only just now watching this. After reading the plot description, I thought it sounded ridiculous and there would be no way to intertwine horror classic characters in one show and have it be anything other than nonsense. Boy, was I wrong. The whole thing is deeply steeped in gothic horror, but they explore many other angles and do some excellent character study. Some really great acting in here, and as mentioned repeatedly, Eva Green is just spectacular.

Be wary of the low star reviews, and notice that most of them complain of it being slow. That should tell you something right there. There's nothing slow about it unless you have the attention span of a child? I don't know, it's a ridiculous claim.

Ive seen mention of the third season being not as good, I'm deep into 2 so I may see that but it won't sway my feelings. I feel like it's a gift already!

Other shows I've loved: Kingdom, The Dark, Mindhunter.

PENNY DREADFUL (2014-2016) was a very dark, gritty gothic series featuring all sorts of the paranormal in a very dreary and broody victorian setting. The story was very interesting, though pretty bleak and twisted at times. There are topics such as seances, mediums, witchcraft, and murder.

"Explorer Sir Malcolm Murray, American gunslinger Ethan Chandler, scientist Victor Frankenstein and medium Vanessa Ives unite to combat supernatural threats in Victorian London."

This series definitely had its highs and lows to be sure, but the cinematography and acting was pretty well done and the story was fairly immersive. This was definitely an interesting watch.

The pilot episode was a typical getting-to-know-you episode where it introduces most of the characters and some intriguing aspects. At first, I was like, "Oh gods above not another vampire show" - boy, was I wrong. By the end of the second episode, I was totally hooked by Eva Green's performance alone. Just stunning work by her in the séance scene. Totally blew me away.

Don't judge a show by it's pilot. Otherwise there would be none at all.

This show is definitely not your average telling of famous stories (vampires, Dorian Gray) as it takes the most gruesome aspects of those tales and incorporates them in whatever manner suits the storyline; Penny Dreadful does not shy away from the taboo, something that has been plaguing certain stories such as Frankenstein and Dorian Gray. This show loves the grotesque and downright sinister nature of storytelling and can depend on its actors to do the job right.

I am highly intrigued by what's to come. It's gritty, filthy, and utterly captivating. I can't see love triangles or any soap opera clichés on the horizon and that makes me optimistic.

The first episode of Penny Dreadful does a number of things right, making me hopeful for the future of this series.

1. The atmosphere is perfect: dense, Gothic, surreal and unsettling. The camera work is fluid and imaginative, and the grimy London settings are really well designed, almost expressionist at times. I was particularly impressed by the scenes in the gentlemen's club, shot from a high angle, and laid out in a curious Victorian grid-pattern.

2. The characters range from predictable but very welcome, to genuinely unique. Timothy Dalton is the former: a generic British adventurer, about equally suggestive of Alan Quatermain, as seen in Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and Sir Richard Francis Burton, real-life explorer extraordinaire. But the pink-haired Egyptologist is a character I've never quite seen before. His dialog is colorful, erudite and truly off-beat.

3. The dialog, now that we're on the subject, is literate and dense. This alone would make the show worth watching. There's a Victorian flamboyance about it, but also some real intellectual content. When's the last time you heard the word "outré" spoken by a character in a TV series?

4. The pace, the steady evolution of the plot, are a refreshing change. Too many shows are forced to rush ahead because they're not really about anything. Moment-to-moment activity is all they've got. Penny Dreadful feels like it's building up something more than that. (Time will tell.)

5. Finally, a very welcome omission: the shortage of jump-scares. There's really just one, and it's placed in such a way that it's almost a spoof of itself. Several other situations, which most shows would have exploited for a cheap shock, are handled with admirable subtlety. There is some gore, but no more than needed to establish a seriously scary tone, a sense of danger.

Penny Dreadful isn't exactly going where no entertainment has gone before. It's clearly 'inspired by' two previous efforts. Most obviously, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a comic that came off rather poorly on the big screen. But also the very under-rated film Van Helsing, which brilliantly re-imagined the classic horror movies of the 1930s, but failed to find an audience perhaps because of its highly energetic style.

Penny Dreadful seems to have learned from both of these sources. Where League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was lightweight and loose with logic, Penny Dreadful is atmospheric and well-plotted. Where Van Helsing was kinetic and flamboyant, Penny Dreadful is quietly creepy.

All in all, it's off to a great start. Let's hope the producers can continue 'in the same vein.'

UPDATE: Closing in on the end of the 2nd season, my admiration for this series continues to grow. The atmosphere of Victorian menace is denser than ever. The characters more flamboyant, the dialog more poetic. I'm not sure where the story is going, or, indeed, if it needs to be headed for any specific destination, when every moment of it is so enjoyable. Rating enthusiastically unchanged: a solid 9 out of 10.