Penny Dreadful: Showtime Classic Victoriana Returns

For those who have watched the first two seasons of “Penny Dreadful” on Showtime it is now a time of celebration as the show that delivers classic victoriana weekly, with a dose of horror icons, has returned.  The first episode, airing free on Hulu at the moment, is titled “The Day Tennyson Died” and it has a melancholic air despite lapses into wholesale violence across the globe.

The series stars a veritable who’s who from the world of British film and television.  Eva Green, Timothy Dalton, Rory Kinnear and even Billie Piper play characters from the world of horror fiction of the time. American actors Josh Hartnett and Wes Studi round out the familiar faces to be found in this splendid reimagining of iconic figures in the genre. 

In this season, along with Victor Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll, the wolf man and Dorian Grey, Dracula makes an appearance. The vampiric count is joined by Renfield, who is Dr. Seward’s secretary, and it appears the vampire has zeroed in on Vanessa Ives (Green.)

After season two, Ives is suffering from crushing depression, or ennui as her friend Ferdinand Lyle says, and goes to see Dr. Seward (Patti LuPone) based upon his recommendation.  Chandler (Hartnett) has been extradited to New Mexico in America and Murray (Dalton) is in Africa.

The explorer is disillusioned after having buried Sembene (Danny Sapani) and after being jumped in an alley outside the bar where he has been drinking, he meets Kaetenay, (Studi) who already knows who the explorer is and steps in to save the man from being murdered by a definite criminal element. 

Chandler is “rescued” from his legal journey by train and it appears that Murray and Kaetenay will be traveling to the American west to save the sharpshooting wolf man.

Dracula makes an off camera appearance as he forces Renfield to provide him with information about Ives.

John Clare (Kinnear) leaves the icebound ship to return home after having a few flashbacks to his old life and breaking a child’s neck.

“Penny Dreadful”l looks like a sumptuous feast of celluloid film posing as television.  The sets are glorious recreations of global areas. A bar in Africa, a steam train in New Mexico, the ship frozen in the ice in the Arctic, and of course Victorian London.

While the series is based, in part, upon the sensationalist “pulp” novels of the day, the series has the feel of a “live” graphic novel. The hues and textures along with the lighting resembles a glossy page rather than a TV screen.  This sells the morbid and melancholy nature of the horror series brilliantly.

The atmosphere is brilliantly gloomy,  foreboding and dark, even when in the desert wastelands of New Mexico.  Perhaps the only note of dissent for this splendid series is its attempt to turn the Jekyll/Hyde mythos  into some sort of Victorian Incredible Hulk.

It may have made sense to turn the medical boogeyman into a chap who has anger management issues a’la Bruce Banner for those not familiar with the Robert Louis Stevenson creation. One can only hope that they do not also have him “hulk out” and change color.

This is wonderfully bleak and twisted television, bringing back the favorite monsters of literature and introducing a few more. The next episode of “Penny Dreadful” airs in July.