The story of Penny Dreadful is an interesting one. It combines all the wonderful ‘original’ horror stories from the turn of the century. You get Dracula, Frankenstein and Dorian Gray all in one gigantic, well thought out storyline. What more could you ask for? Well, how about each treated carefully like a fine tuned piano and inserted gently into a competent, interesting and sometimes horrifying set of scenarios that not only provide an easy to follow origin, but a believable world for these characters to reside in. Creator John Logan, and his beautiful cast of characters really make this work.
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The story surrounding the series revolves around Sir Malcolm Murray (Timothy Dalton), who is looking for his missing daughter Mina (Olivia Llewellyn). Mina’s childhood friend, Vanessa Ives (Eva Green), also is assisting in the search, while bringing in Ethan Chandler (Josh Hartnett), the lone American, as a hired gun to take care of ‘things’ when they need to be taken care of. Along the way, Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway) does his best to help out, while keeping a nasty secret of his own — his creature(Rory Kennear). To add more flavor to the adventure, a rich loner named Dorian Gray (Reeve Carney), who has an unhealthy obsession for sex and pain, does his best to keep Vanessa satisfied and make things interesting on the side. This is your cast of characters that have come together, and as innocent as this story sounds, it’s far more horrifying when you get into it.
What I particularly liked about the first season of Penny Dreadful is how at the beginning it seemed just a simple story of retrieval. You have Murray simply trying to find his daughter, who has been abducted, and it seems pretty cut and dry. Then the vampires enter the scene, and you firmly understand there is far more to this story than meets the eye. Any horror fan at this point in the story would probably think there is going to be badass vampire hunting going on and the first season might conclude with this gigantic fight — they would be half right.
The fear you might have, and that I had, is that Logan might have just been stealing pieces and parts and ‘frankenstein-ing’ his own horror adventure together; nothing more, nothing less. The story certainly feels that way at the start of the series. The way the characters react, especially Murray and Ives, the story teeters almost into this high-budget emo horror series. Everyone is wearing black and everyone appears grim — we’ve seen this before.
Then the series opens the door to a darker, deeper and more sinister sub-story that magnifies what Penny Dreadful establishes from the beginning. You get some solid backstory about Vanessa Ives and what makes her so vital in Murray’s quest. You learn a bit about Murray and his dark imperfections that you don’t readily see at the beginning. You also learn about Ives relationship to Mina and what that meant in the scheme of things to Mina’s disappearance. It’s incredibly dreadful, but in a good way. As these backstories start to unfold, you see these easy, familiar one-dimensional characters growing into these two-dimensional masterpieces. The show starts kicking on all cylinders and you probably will become obsessed with all these characters and how they fit into the overall storyline. At least that is what it did to me.
I don’t want to give too much away, but god damn this show hits its fifth gear in the last three episodes, as it ends on a welcomed high note (or low note, depending on how you feel about it) and you have to see how season two begins.
If there is a low point in the show to complain about, it’s how slow it starts. Again, it’s easy to write this off as some emo horror story production, if you don’t give it proper time to cultivate into something dreadfully beautiful. Quite honestly, if the name ‘Showtime’ hadn’t been attached to it, I bet most people would have pushed it aside after the first two episodes. It honestly starts off rough and a little boring — even with the vampires. Thankfully, it will eventually hit some strides, show some depth and come together shortly thereafter, but it doesn’t start out impressing.
Now, the show’s high point, and something that might be overshadowed by the spectacular performances from Dalton and Green, and their storyline, is the performance of Rory Kinnear as Frankenstein’s ‘creature’. This isn’t the hideous monster with the metal bolts in its neck, nor is it Robert De Niro’s mangled mess from the Branagh film. Rather, Kinnear and creator John Logan create a perfect imperfected creature that is more mangled on the inside thanks to his birth and subsequent rejection from Frankenstein than any sort of stitched-up body could portray. The creature’s state of mind is such an emotional story that anyone with any sort of loneliness or loss in their lives could relate. When Kinnear is onscreen as the creature, you will genuinely feel for him and his situation. Simply put, he is freaking brilliant to watch in action and he plays a character that is interesting to see develop. I wish he had more play in the story, but he is somewhat of a living backstory to Frankenstein — although, he does develop himself through him.
Anyway, in the end, the story in Penny Dreadful is a methodically created horror/adventure that gradually hooks you. You may not understand or attach your attention to what’s going on at the beginning, but if you stick with it you will find a wonderful show that is truly dreadful in the best of ways. John Logan and his talented cast of actors/characters should be commended for not only making something special out of familiar horror stories we already know, but also breathing life into the original characters that Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley created with different intentions than just scaring the bejesus out of people.
I honestly can’t wait to see the second season.
On the Blu-ray side of things, this was a gorgeous transfer from CBS/Paramount. Every horrifying detail of the show, which is mainly reds, blacks and whites, is shown beautifully in a quite perfected HD transfer. For a show that relies heavily on black to lead the way, there are no signs of graininess, artifacts nor are there signs of compression issues; it’s a really gorgeous and tough looking HD transfer to Blu-ray. In short, it’s quite good looking.
Now, on the special features side of things, it’s okay at best. Here’s what you’re looking at:
▪ Ray Donovan: Season One, Episodes 1 & 2
▪ What is a Penny Dreadful?
▪ Literary Roots
▪ Coming Together
▪ The Artisans Pt. 1
▪ The Artisans Pt. 2
▪ The Grand Guignol
▪ Prostitution and Sex in Victorian Times
▪ British Exploration & The Search for the Nile
▪ The Science of Medicine
It might seem like there is a lot here, but these are short quick-hitters. You get to learn a bit of how everything came together, intentions of the characters, treatment of the classic stories and how the production in general was built. There isn’t a lot of beef to these, and I wish there was — commentary would have been brilliant — but you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit. Television shows generally don’t come with deep and exotic features. Still, there should have been a bit more, and I think Showtime realized that when they put the Ray Donovan episodes on the final disc. That seemed a little odd.
Anyway, you do get some good information from John Logan and his crew, but I wanted a little bit more from the features.