Penny Dreadful – Facing your inner demons

The Netflix show “Penny Dreadful” is a refreshing surprise in the pile of new series coming up every day.

I am constantly puzzled by meeting people who have not watched it yet. Especially when I know them to be fans of dark fantasy and horror stories.

Fantasy on TV today is dominated by  “Game of Thrones” and shows featuring vampires looking like super models, young  men slaying monsters and incredibly sexy super heroes fighting crime. Don’t get me wrong, I love and watch most of these shows. (Solely for their plot of course…)

But “Penny Dreadful” is the one series that really got me hooked. It gets me excited about its stories and has me feverishly anticipating each new episode.

I love it, because it is different from any other TV show I have watched.

That it manages to be so different is quite surprising. The story takes place in a the well used setting of 19th century London. Also it features some of the most re-used characters in fiction, like Dr. Frankenstein, Jack the Ripper or Dorian Gray. But it takes such a novel turn on everything, that it stands out to me.

The characters 

First of all, there are no heroes in this story. No adventurers with pure hearts and best intentions set out to save the day.

The protagonist in this story could all be villains in todays mainstream shows:

• The jealous witch that betrays her best friend,
• the racist explorer slaughtering his way through Africa,
• the murdering gunslinger without conscience and
• the drug addicted physicist, who selfishly experiments with life and death.

Interestingly, at no point does the show try to come up with excuse for its protagonist crimes. That evil side is part of their character, just as they all have human traits too – a lot of insecurity, loneliness and vulnerability.

Yet the characters and their development are portrayed with such depths that you cannot help but to be drawn into their stories.

The story

The centre of the series is Vanessa Ives. A young women with strange dark powers of divination. She is carrying the great responsibility of having betrayed her best friend, thus sending her on a path into darkness and to her death.

But as it turns out her friend Mina did not really die but became an undead vampire. So Vanessa reluctantly teams up with Mina’s father, Sir Malcom, to try to save her.

Sir Malcom is troubled by his own feelings of guilt. His son died on one of Sir Malcom’s expeditions to Africa. So saving his daughter is his hope for redemption.

They enlist the help of an American gunslinger, Ethan Chandler, who is cursed by repeatedly finding people around him getting ripped up and killed.

Another ally is found in young Viktor Frankenstein. In this story, he is an opium addicted physicist, who secretly researches the creation of life.  But he is haunted by monsters of his past, that vow to make his life a living hell.

The story is pretty simple and has been told a hundred time before. But “Penny Dreadful” is not so much about what happens, but about who it happens to. The fascination is not watching people fighting against an evil antagonist, but witnessing the stand-off with their inner demons. Seeing them struggle as they have to come to terms with themselves and with each other.

The cast

The strongest feature of “Penny Dreadful” are the great performances of its actors.

Eva Green is the uncontested star of the show. Almost all the time her body is caged into the stiff collars and corsets of the 19th century fashion. So she has to rely completely on facial expression to convey any acting. A skill she masters perfectly. Her ability to, within seconds, turn the beautiful face of Vanessa Ives into the ugly, horrifying visage of an evil witch is utterly amazing to me.

The men in the cast are doing a decent job, as can be expected from these experienced actors. I have to stress out, that I was not once reminded of some of their fromer roles as James Bond (Timothy Dalton) or the other guy in Pearl Harbour (Josh Harnett). Which I think shows how good they incorporate their characters.

A note on the title 

As all the other reviews on the show have commented extensively on its title, I will not dwell on that. Just a short note to my German readers, as there seems to be some confusion:

No, Penny Dreadful is not the name of the woman on the cover. It is a term referring to horror story publications of 19th century Britain. They were published in cheap, weekly magazines (like the German Groschenromane) and covered stories such as “Frankenstein”, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” or “Van Helsing”.

Conclusion

“Penny Dreadful” is, after all, a horror series. So there is violence, blood, killing and also some sex in it. But if you are not put off by those things, you should watch “Penny Dreadful”.  The stories told are as old as mankind. But they are told with such a twist and by such outstanding performances, that – for me – it is currently the greatest series out there.