Penny Dreadful (TV Series)

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Current revision as of 09:42, 30 June 2020

Penny Dreadful is a British-American horror drama television series created for Showtime and Sky by John Logan, who also acts as executive producer alongside Sam Mendes. The show was originally pitched to several US and UK channels, and eventually landed with Showtime, with Sky Atlantic as co-producer. It premiered at the South by Southwest film festival on March 9 and began airing on television on April 28, 2014, on Showtime on Demand. The series premiered on Showtime in the United States on May 11, 2014, and on Sky Atlantic in the United Kingdom on May 20, 2014. After the third-season finale on June 19, 2016, series creator John Logan announced that Penny Dreadful had ended as the main story had reached its conclusion.

The title refers to the penny dreadfuls, a type of 19th-century British fiction publication with lurid and sensational subject matter. The series draws upon many public domain characters from 19th-century British and Irish Gothic fiction, including Dorian Gray from Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray; Mina Harker, Abraham Van Helsing, John Seward, Renfield, and Count Dracula from Bram Stoker's Dracula; Victor Frankenstein and his monster from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; and Henry Jekyll from Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Justine from Justine, or The Misfortunes of Virtue by the Marquis de Sade also appears.

A spin-off series, Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, premiered on April 26, 2020.

[edit] Episodes

Main article: List of Penny Dreadful episodes

[edit] Cast and characters

[edit] Main cast

• Reeve Carney as Dorian Gray, a charismatic man who is ageless and immortal.
• Timothy Dalton as Malcolm Murray, a hardened explorer of the African continent, on a deeply personal quest to save the remaining members of his family.
• Eva Green as Vanessa Ives, an enigmatic, quietly driven heroine who proves herself a force to be reckoned with as she battles powerful, relentless forces from the underworld.
• Rory Kinnear as the Creature, a creation Frankenstein abruptly abandoned, who, not given a name, variously uses the aliases Caliban and John Clare.
• Billie Piper as Brona Croft / Lily Frankenstein, an Irish immigrant seeking to escape her brutal, violent past.
• Danny Sapani as Sembene, a mysterious, long-time ally of Malcolm (seasons 1–2).
• Harry Treadaway as Victor Frankenstein, an arrogant, socially inept young doctor whose ambition and research involve transcending the barrier between life and death.
• Josh Hartnett as Ethan Chandler (born Ethan Lawrence Talbot), a charming, brash and daring American man of action with uncanny marksmanship, who detests violence, and is more complicated than he likes to admit.
• Helen McCrory as Evelyn Poole, a professional spiritualist known by the alias Madame Kali who is secretly the leader of a powerful coven of witches called "Nightcomers" (season 2, recurring season 1).
• Simon Russell Beale as Ferdinand Lyle, an eccentric Egyptologist (season 2, recurring seasons 1 and 3).
• Patti LuPone as Florence Seward, an alienist or early psychotherapist treating Vanessa's depression (season 3; LuPone previously guest-starred as Joan Clayton in season 2)
• Wes Studi as Kaetenay, an Apache with a connection to Ethan, who becomes an ally to Malcolm (season 3).

[edit] Supporting cast

[edit] Introduced in season 1

• Olivia Llewellyn as Mina Harker, Malcolm's daughter and Vanessa's childhood friend who has been abducted (seasons 1–2).
• Alex Price as Proteus, a new creation of Dr. Frankenstein's, named after the literary character of the same name, who was killed by the Creature (seasons 1–2).
• Lorcan Cranitch as Inspector Goldsworthy, of the London police (season 1).
• Robert Nairne as the Vampire, an evil creature who leads a cabal of undead and who abducted Mina Harker (season 1).
• Olly Alexander as Fenton, a vampire minion (season 1).
• Graham Butler as Peter Murray, Malcolm's son, who died accompanying his father on one of his expeditions (seasons 1–2).
• Noni Stapleton as Gladys Murray, Malcolm's estranged wife and mother of Mina and Peter (seasons 1–2).
• Alun Armstrong as Vincent Brand, the leader of a troupe of actors in residence at the Grand Guignol (season 1).
• Hannah Tointon as Maud Gunneson, an actress at the Grand Guignol, and object of the Creature's affection (season 1).
• Gavin Fowler as Simon, Maud's partner who mistreats the Creature (season 1).
• David Warner as Abraham Van Helsing, a haematologist and colleague of Frankenstein (season 1).
• Stephen Lord as Warren Roper, a Pinkerton agent hired to bring Ethan back to the United States (seasons 1–2).

[edit] Introduced in season 2

• Sarah Greene as Hecate Poole, Evelyn's eldest daughter (seasons 2–3).
• Nicole O'Neill, Olivia Chenery and Charlotte Beckett as minor witches of Evelyn's coven. (season 2)
• Douglas Hodge as Bartholomew Rusk, a Scotland Yard police inspector investigating the grisly Mariner's Inn Massacre (seasons 2–3).
• Jack Hickey as the junior inspector working with Rusk (seasons 2–3).
• Jonny Beauchamp as Angelique, a mysterious transgender woman who gains Dorian's attention (season 2).
• David Haig as Oscar Putney, the owner of a struggling wax museum who employs the Creature for his own nefarious reasons (season 2).
• Ruth Gemmell as Octavia Putney, Oscar's wife who is uneasy about the Creature and treats him cruelly (season 2).
• Tamsin Topolski as Lavinia Putney, the blind daughter of the Creature's new employers, with whom he develops a specious friendship (season 2).
• Ronan Vibert as Geoffrey Hawkes, a rich landowner who fell under Evelyn's sway (season 2).

[edit] Introduced in season 3

• Shazad Latif as Henry Jekyll, a chemist and college friend of Victor Frankenstein.
• Christian Camargo as Dracula, the brother of Lucifer who fell to Earth to feed on the blood of the living as the first vampire. In London, he takes the guise of kindly zoologist Alexander Sweet to captivate Vanessa.
• Samuel Barnett as Renfield, Florence Seward's secretary who becomes involved with Dracula.
• Sebastian Croft and Jack Greenlees as minor vampires serving Dracula.
• Casper Allpress and Pandora Colin as Jack and Marjorie, the Creature's son and wife from when still alive.
• Cokey Falkow as Scarman, a gunman in the service of Ethan's father.
• Jessica Barden as Justine, a homeless, brutalized young prostitute who becomes an acolyte to Lily.
• Sean Gilder as Franklin Ostow, a marshal in the American West aiding Rusk in the hunt for Ethan.
• Brian Cox as Jared Talbot, a ruthless, powerful American rancher and the estranged father of Ethan.
• Perdita Weeks as Catriona Hartdegen, a thanatologist scholar with expert knowledge of the supernatural.

Notable non-recurring cast include Mary Stockley as Victor Frankenstein's mother Caroline, Anna Chancellor as Vanessa's mother Claire, and Frank McCusker as Christopher Banning, a doctor overseeing Vanessa's treatment while institutionalized, all appearing in flashbacks during the first season, as well as Oliver Cotton as Father Matthew, having been requested to perform an exorcism on Vanessa in the first season's penultimate episode.

[edit] Production and development

[edit] Reception

[edit] Critical reception

[edit] Ratings

The series debuted to 872,000 viewers (1.44 {{nbsp}} inserts a non-breaking space character. It's useful for preventing line breaks between words which should not appear on separate lines. million including re-runs). This number does not include the 900,000 viewers who previewed the series on Showtime on Demand and the Showtime app.

[edit] Accolades

[edit] Related media

[edit] Comics

[edit] Spin-off series

Main article: Penny Dreadful: City of Angels

[edit] See also

• Frankenstein in popular culture
• Dracula in popular culture
• Neo-Victorian
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
• Vampire film
• List of vampire television series

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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