Review of Penny Dreadful Episode One
By Casey Douglass
Are you afraid of
spiders? If so you might find the first episode of new TV series
Penny Dreadful a little squirm inducing. They don’t feature
in a large way but just enough to provide some creeping menace.
Spiders aren’t the only sinister thing to skitter their way into
view though.
Penny Dreadful
is a new series from Showtime and Sky Atlantic based on the old 19th
century cheap and morbidly cheerful penny dreadfuls. These escapist
books featured near-the-knuckle fiction that appealed to people
seeking cheap and probably blasphemous thrills. Penny Dreadful
as a series draws on this concept and drags in some well known horror
characters such as Victor Frankenstein.
Image ©Showtime |
After seeing a woman
brutally attacked, we see the psychically gifted Vanessa Ives (Eva
Green) approaching sharpshooter Ethan Chandler (Josh Hartnett) with
an offer of some dirty work. Ethan then meets explorer Sir Malcolm
Murray (Timothy Dalton) and is given his first taste of the other
sinister world that is so close to our own.
Image ©Showtime |
Part of the fun of the
episode was trying to suss out what each character brought to the
table and, with the vague knowledge that they could be some great
literary superstar, I found myself looking for clues. The episode
ends with a nice reveal that confirms one such suspicion was correct.
The actually
otherworldly stuff is done very well and much of the episode takes
place at a brooding tentative pace. When there is a bit of action it
is quite frenetic and often pretty gory, which all lends itself to
the overall feel of the thing.
It’s hard to judge a
series on one episode, but if the successive ones are at all like
this one, I think Penny Dreadful will do very well. I
certainly intend to keep watching at least.