When hands split through a
man's chest in a revision of the iconic scene from Ridley Scott's
Alien, it was easy to
guess Penny Dreadful
would be a winner.
Set in Victorian London,
the AXN series centres on a motley crew of supernatural-hunters who
themselves are not what they seem. They are ostensibly searching for
a man's missing daughter but the viewer is soon entangled in
everything from Dracula to Dorian Gray and this: A doctor is working
on what looks like an autopsy, when the lights go off, he lights a
lamp, turns around and the corpse is standing. The doctor weeps and
the creature moves towards him, finger outstretched to catch a tear
and rub it down his own eye. “Can you hear?” the doctor asks. The
man does and the doctor whispers, “My name...is Victor
Frankenstein.”
If that doesn't give you
your penny's worth, nothing will. The title is from 19th
century England, referring to lurid, serialised stories printed on
cheap paper that cost a penny each.
With this show, though,
it's the words that carry most weight. Listen
to Frankenstein's 'firstborn' sneering at him: “Were you really so
naive to imagine that we’d see eternity in a daffodil?” in a nod
to Wordsworth and Blake and you will get an idea of the emotional
ballast headed your way. The cast speaking the lines help in no
small way, although HarryTreadaway as the
good Doctor swimming in emotional angst is a clear winner.
This
Penny Dreadful
is written by John Logan. You can just
imagine him as he should be, in a dark, dank garret clutching a
tawdry Christmas star bauble in his ink-smeared hands and cackling at
man's hubris from his own gutter.
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