Showtime’s Penny Dreadful ran for three seasons and 27 episodes, from its premiere on May 11, 2014, to its finale on June 19, 2016. John Logan created it, Sam Mendes executive produced alongside him, and Sky Atlantic co-produced. It is a horror drama that puts Dr. Frankenstein, Dorian Gray and the cast of Dracula in the same Victorian London, and it works better than that premise has any right to.
Trailer, via Penny Dreadful.
A Gunman, an Explorer and Vanessa Ives
The first season begins in London, 1891. Ethan Chandler, an American gunman and roadshow artist played by Josh Hartnett, is hired by the explorer Malcolm Murray (Timothy Dalton) and the mysterious Vanessa Ives (Eva Green) to help rescue Murray’s daughter from a creature. Victor Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway) helps them, then gets stalked by the undead thing he once reanimated and abandoned. Ives takes up with Dorian Gray (Reeve Carney) and is haunted by Lucifer, who wants her as his bride and queen.
That is a lot of plot, and the show never apologizes for it. The title comes from the penny dreadfuls, the lurid 19th-century British fiction the series is named after, and the show wears that inheritance openly.
The Witches, the Bride and the Murder
Season two tightens the screws. A coven of witches led by Evelyn Poole hunts Ives, aiming to hand her to Lucifer. Frankenstein is forced to build his creature a bride. An inspector works a grisly murder Chandler committed in a London inn.
Season three scatters everyone. Ives stays in London and consults the alienist Florence Seward, played by Patti LuPone. Chandler is extradited to the United States. Murray is in Zanzibar. Ives starts a relationship with the zoologist Alexander Sweet, who is secretly Count Dracula, Lucifer’s brother.
What the Cast Does With It
Green carries the series. Vanessa Ives is the role the whole thing hangs on, and the show knows it. Dalton gives Murray a stiff, wounded dignity. Rory Kinnear plays John Clare, the Creature, and Billie Piper plays Lily, also known as Brona Croft. Wes Studi appears as Kaetenay.
The show’s real trick is that it treats public-domain horror as a shared universe before that was a corporate reflex. Dorian Gray comes from Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. Mina Harker, Abraham Van Helsing, John Seward, Renfield and Count Dracula come from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Victor Frankenstein and his monster come from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Henry Jekyll comes from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Justine, from the Marquis de Sade’s Justine, or The Misfortunes of Virtue, also appears.
Where It Stands
Logan ended the show on purpose. After the third-season finale, he said the main story had reached its conclusion. That is rare, and it is the right call.
Ranking what the series does best:
- Eva Green’s Vanessa Ives, the spine of all 27 episodes.
- The first season’s rescue plot, the cleanest engine the show built.
- The second season’s witch coven, the best sustained threat.
- The third season’s global spread, the most ambitious and the most uneven.
The spin-off Penny Dreadful: City of Angels followed. It is a separate thing, and it does not change what the original accomplished.
The show’s weakness is that it sometimes mistakes accumulation for depth. Stacking literary monsters in one city is a stunt; making them mean something is the job, and Penny Dreadful does that job about two-thirds of the time. The third season’s decision to split the cast across London, the United States and Zanzibar costs the show its claustrophobia, which was its best asset. Victorian London in the dark is the point. When the characters leave it, the dread thins out.
What remains is a serious, well-acted horror drama with a genuine point of view about grief and appetite, and a lead performance that holds the whole thing together. It is not the definitive version of this idea. It is a good one.
Key facts
- Score: 7.0/10
- Network: Showtime, with Sky Atlantic as co-producer
- Created by: John Logan
- Run: 3 seasons, 27 episodes
- First aired: May 11, 2014
- Finale: June 19, 2016
- Metacritic: 70/100
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