Review "Penny Dreadful"

LOGAN, John (Creator), J.A. Bayona, Coky Giedroyc, James Hawes, Dearbhla Walsh (Dirs.) “Penny Dreadful”, 2014, Desert Wolf Productions/Neal Street Productions.

Question: What do you do if you want to make a TV series based on Alan Moore’s graphic work “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”, but you don’t own the rights to it?

Answer: You do it regardless!

Seriously, if you’re an über-fan of Moore’s patchwork fantasy of literary superheroes, you shouldn’t look too closely at this show: there are strong ‘borrowings’ here that will make die-hard aficionados grit their teeth. Personally, I could almost care less, since – as Moore and his fans are also aware (or should be) – the framework for these types of shows is public domain material and so the story is what’s on show here, not the characters per se. For the record, I was not impressed by the film that came out a few years back with Sean Connery topping the bill: it bent Moore’s whole premise so far out of shape that it was painful to watch. In fact, I had to pretend I was watching some other show that merely borrowed from Moore’s comic in order to see it through. Coming to “Penny Dreadful” therefore, it kind of griped my cookies that this series also sneakily borrows from the movie version of the “League” in places, a fact which initially had my alarm bells ringing.

Let’s compare and contrast: In Moore’s comic we have Allan Quatermain, Mina Harker, Captain Nemo, the Invisible Man, Dr Jekyll (and Mr Hyde) and all of their particular quirks which they bring to the tale. The movie version added Tom Sawyer and Dorian Gray to the mix and radically altered the other personalities involved with varying (mostly limited) degrees of success. In “Penny Dreadful” we have Sir Malcolm Murray, African explorer and father of Mina Harker (née Murray); Vanessa Ives, childhood companion of Mina and sometime spiritual gateway to Forces From Beyond; Ethan Chandler, a trick-shooting American, lately detached from the travelling rodeo circus in which he performed; Dr. Victor Frankenstein and his rebellious Creature; and Dorian Gray. Along for the ride is Billie Piper playing Brona Croft, an Irish prostitute with tuberculosis.

From the foregoing, it’s easy to see that the roles and archetypes match pretty much point for point. John Logan takes a line from the “League” movie by inserting the gun-toting Yank and Dorian Gray; however, while the addition of this latter character to the film arguably was not a bad thing, here the suave Mr Gray is a messy addition that muddies the waters too much to no real effect (apart from titillation, of which, more anon). The real difference here is in the tone of the performances and the story being presented.

Sir Malcolm Murray fulfils the Quatermain role deftly, complete with mysterious African manservant and driven by a need to rescue his stricken daughter Mina, or avenge her death if rescue is not an option. Timothy Dalton is surprisingly perfect casting here, just arch enough to project the Victorian melodrama and brooding enough to sell the damaged psyche propelling him onwards. Eva Green who plays the equally-damaged Vanessa really cuts loose with the flip-flopping tortured repression and raw sexuality of this character and ends up treading a rather fine line. She has that brittle sort of beauty that can so easily shade into creepiness with just the quirk of an eyebrow. Josh Hartnett brings real down-to-earth physicality to his role – the hard-drinking, hard-bitten, guilt-ridden, ladies’ man types suit him perfectly. Along with these, guest stars like Alun Armstrong playing a tired Grand Guignol vaudeville actor and David Warner playing the “haematologist” van Helsing, not to mention Simon Russell Beale playing the spectacularly fey Egyptologist Ferdinand Lyle, are all luminous bright spots along the way.

As to the rest, I’m not so convinced. Victor Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway) is too sniffy; the Creature (Rory Kinnear) too one-dimensional (but I kinda get that); Dorian Gray (Reeve Carney) is all smarm and not much else. None of the actors really own these roles to any great degree and so they tend to fade a little into the background.

And, speaking of which, what a background it is! Finally, a London-based Victorian drama where the art directors bothered to look through Gustave Doré’s engravings of the city before getting to work! This version of London positively reeks: it makes you feel greasy just watching it! For starters, there is pea-soup fog – London particular – doing what it should do and doing it well. It coils and obscures; it reveals dramatically; it enfolds and haloes lights: the directors know exactly how to use the stuff for great effect. Next, there are rats: not just a few squeaking around the joint; limitless supplies of them crawling up the walls. I’ll admit the ratting scene - in which a terrier is cast into a rat pit while punters bet on how many rats it can kill within a designated time – was something I fast-forwarded through: it generally doesn’t bother me if a human character gets torn to shreds on the screen but I can’t watch any kind of cruelty to animals, even pretend versions. The constant shifting between the palatial homes of the well-to-do and the seedy dens of the impoverished is another strength here, painting the fine line which divides the Haves from the Have-Nots.

The horror shots are frankly spectacular also. Wherever there’s a Harker, you know that vampires are not too far behind and the show kicks off with Sir Malcolm, Vanessa and Ethan penetrating a vampire nest and dealing righteous vengeance. Here again the art directors and set designers hit all the right notes: these buggers are festy indeed, with piles of shredded corpses strewn around and plenty of creepy ghouls in the wings to keep them protected. These are leeches which really enjoy rolling around in their leftovers. The violence is visceral, dark and unflinching; this is one of those vehicles where you don’t want to get too attached.

There is a flip-side to all the death and dismemberment though, and that’s sex. Frankly I’m tired of it. Nowadays, if an episode of a TV show is running short by a handful of minutes, the creators just fill the gaps with sex; as “Game of Thrones” repeatedly demonstrates, if that sex can be non-consensual and violent, then all the better. I mean, I’m dragging my way through “Helix” at the moment and even in the midst of a grotesque viral outbreak, the cast see fit to fill in a few unoccupied minutes of dead air by doing the Wild Thing. Give me a break! In “Penny Dreadful”, sex is everywhere: Vanessa’s repressive guilt comes from her unrequited lesbian attachment to Mina; Sir Malcolm’s guilt comes from somewhere messy and vaguely incestuous; Ethan moons over Vanessa and makes do with Brona, herself suffering from the cruelty of lovers past; and Dorian Gray sleeps with all of them. Yes, it’s that kind of show, folks. You can easily develop carpal tunnel syndrome from constantly pressing the fast-forward button on the remote.

The advertising tag-line for this show when it first aired was “There is some thing within us all”; I assume that they weren’t referring to Dorian, but rather implying that sex is the root of all evil hang-ups.

It’s an unusual show in that it displays all kinds of excess; but while the sex is definitely gratuitous, the violence isn’t, despite being plentiful. I get the distinct feeling that Mr Logan knows his horror to a pitch-perfect degree, but that a bunch of studio execs were pushing the accelerator on the sex angle. And it’s not just endless parades of naked flesh and people humping either; the language turns the screen blue also. The scene wherein Vanessa is possessed by the dire spirit of Amunet can only be described as ‘brave’, seeing as it pushes the very extremities of acting credibility along with decency. Like I said: fine line. Douglas Adams mentions a trophy for the most gratuitous use of the F-bomb in a screenplay in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe; “Penny Dreadful” has definitely scored a spot on the short-list for this award.

In the final analysis, I’m somewhat torn. I like the look of this show; I like most of the actors (even Timothy Dalton, who I find usually falls somewhere between “camp” and “high camp” in his performances); many of the ideas presented here are very cool (such as vaguely insectoid Egyptian vampires which hearken back to The Beetle). The scares are strong and very deftly presented; the tone and the look of the time and place are superbly captured. The interrelationships of the characters are complex and fascinating and don’t fall into place too easily or obviously – I didn’t spot who the werewolf was until after the second episode, for example. And I never felt that I was watching a tired rip-off of Alan Moore’s original idea.

But please, for God’s sake, would it have killed them to try and keep their clothes on?!

Three-and-a-half tentacled horrors.