Penny Dreadful

All hail to Eva Green! What an actress! If for nothing else you should see it for her. And I must say for all the other actors - bravo. The first season is amazing. I must say that I'm not overly fond of watching horror movies but this was something different. Let's say that not all episodes are horror. The combination of characters, the writing, the dark atmosphere, everything was brilliant. It is an interesting journey through characters such as Frankenstein, Dorian Grey etc. But I must go back to the acting and once again say it's a masterpiece. I really recommend this one.

If heaven and hell are real I pray I'm forgiven for my fascination with such dark shows. Just by looking at the poster you know this is going to be something unholy. You got Frankenstein, demons, the Christian devil himself, God, vampires like Dracula and Dorian gray, werewolves, witches, and not the pretty kind, all put in a fiendish Victorian setting with a remarkable script and great cast lineup to go with it, how could you not love this show. It's heartbreaking that it only had 3 seasons but after Vanessa Ives character arc was completed it's hard imagining the show going forward despite the assemblage of characters they could have made center of the show. It just wouldn't be the same without her.

This is definitely one of my favorite shows ever, first show I ever binge watched too. I remember wanting to watch this after seeing how genius the poster is but didn't think a horror tv show could be interesting. I got S1 late afternoon on a Friday; that was when I learnt that horrors could be intellectual, not just jump scares and gory murders. By Sunday morning I was finished with the whole series, left me feeling void inside because I knew I wasn't going to find another series like it again. If you're a fan of the genre, here's a gem for you.

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.

I actually enjoyed Penny Dreadful much more than I thought I would. I thought it would be just another another supernatural series that's worth watching but would end up forgetting after a while. It's not. I was hooked from the start. It has so many twists and turns that it will keep you entertained through the series. It's only three seasons long but they are 3 great seasons. All three seasons are equally good. Having three seasons this show never grows stale and goes out while still interesting. Eva Green and Josh Hartnett are both fantastic actors and this is some of their best work of their careers. If you're a fan of this genre then Penny Dreadful should be a must watch for you. I promise you won't be disappointed!

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.