My wife and I experienced a power outage, which went on for several days. With a little MacGyver ingenuity, I was able activate my portable, Blu-ray player, and what did Donna and I end up (re)watching? Ah, none other than the prolific John (Alien: Covenant) Logan's Penny Dreadful, that fascinating, monster rally that's been compared to Dan Curtis' Dark Shadows in both format and scope. For the sake of the Showtime saga, we went right down the line, absorbing all three seasons (twenty-seven episodes in total).
Of course, Penny Dreadful aspires to be its own thing, brewing an overlapping and nip-and-tucking, Multi/Monsterverse of classic, horror literature/cinema, with dashes of Universal and Hammer, where no character is ever quite as he/she seems, with some even swapped among legends (case in point, Abraham Van Helsing becoming Frankenstein's associate instead of Dracula's). This revitalized turn may strike some as blasphemous, but the redesign beckons Ray Bradbury's notion of keeping old sources interesting by reimagining their traditions, though never obscuring such beyond recognition.
The Penny Dreadful ensemble consists of (to list but a few): Harry Treadaway as Victor Frankenstein, Rory Kinnear as Frankenstein's Monster/John Clare, Billie Piper as Brona Croft/the Bride of Frankenstein, Alex Price as Proteus/a second Frankenstein Monster, Reeve Carney as Dorian Gray, Josh Harnett as Ethan Chandler/Lawrence Talbot (the Wolfman), Brian Cox as Jared Talbot, Wes Studi as Kaetenay (a surrogate Maleva), Eva Green as Vanessa Ives, Timothy Dalton as Sir Malcolm Murray, Olivia Llewellyn as Mina Murray, David Warner as Van Helsing, Cristian Carmargo as Count Dracula/Alexander Sweet, Samuel Barnett as Renfield, Patti LuPune as Dr. Seward, Shazard Latif as Henry Jekyll, Helen McCrory as Evelyn Poole, Sarah Greene as Hecate Poole, and there are more...ah, yes, so many more in this grand, Devil's brew.
The who's-who rundown works well for the characters, who sometimes carry aliases (as one can deduce from the above). It all comes out in the wash, though, with (as the aforementioned, Bradbury assertion indicates) the archetypes still satisfying their classic motives.
For those who know and appreciate its purpose and plan, I've no need to rehash it. For those who may be unaware, to experience Penny Dreadful from a fresh viewpoint (even with a few tidbits revealed, as in this post) is only proper. Give Logan's reimagining a try or hell, a retry. Either way (as Donna and I can attest), you'll gain an ideal means to pass the time, whether the electric is on or not.
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