Penny Dreadful: City of Angels

What the hell is this? That was my first reaction upon seeing the US version of "Penny Dreadful".

Aside from sharing the same name as the original it has little in common with it. Penny Dreadful was an encyclopedic trip into the world of monsters and the supernatural. A homage to a time of classic horror and Gothic writers like Stoker and Shelly.

What you get here, is yet another politicised drama with racial overtones, that I quickly found preachy, cliched and ultimately, tiresome.

The US has its own rich history of horror writing in the form of Poe and Lovecraft. These and other works could have been explored in an anthology but instead you get this tedious offering.

A missed opportunity, to say the least. 4/10.

I didn't doubt Nathan Lane was a good actor, and I can't say I remember seeing him in a dramatic role before this, however, he was EXCELLENT in Penny Dreadful: City of Angels. A true standout performance, IMHO, made all the more noticeable by the generally uninspiring and muddled overall story. Too many characters that would be the primary or secondary focus of an episode then largely forgotten other than popping up periodically w/o further development. It's set at an interesting time and place in history, but character motivation(s) and clarity of the stakes at hand were generally fuzzy and underdeveloped. Not sure that I'd bother w/ a second season.

What made the original "Penny Dreadful" series excellent was the basis of the "Penny Dreadful" tabloids that were written during that time. Many people are familiar with classic literary characters like Dr. Frankenstein and Dorian Gray. The original "Penny Dreadful" brought those and other characters into a new light by exploring their origin stories in the psychological thriller that took place in the dark corners of Victorian London.

This new series has fell lack luster in comparison. Although it is interesting in also being a period piece, the parallels end there. This series is more comparable with a less well written "American Gods." The characters are connected in a conflict between the Mexican folklore deity, Santa Muerte, the caretaker of the dead and guide to the great beyond, and her spiritual sister, the demoness Magda, who believes mankind is inherently evil and aims to prove her point.

How could that even happen? Isn't that the same showrunner who created the original series? The first five minutes already look strangely cheap, CGI fire from 20 years ago, artificial acting. Then this constant bloom / glare filter in almost every shot. The intense horror show atmosphere with emotional trauma, this time it is just gone.

I had to rewatch the first few minutes of the original to make sure I'm not betrayed by my memory. I wasn't. This just feels cheap and artificial, truly strange it is written by the same guy.

The original Penny Dreadful was one of the greatest limited series ever written and produced. Why create a spin off when everyone just wants the old cast, scenery and macabre sound that made the show special. They should have continued where they left off.