An overall sense of mystery has pervaded Showtime’s new psychological horror series Penny Dreadful, premiering Sunday, and that is probably fitting.
The eight-episode Victorian-era series is set in 1891 London and focuses on some of the scariest characters in literature, including Dracula, Dorian Gray, and Dr. Frankenstein and his creature. Bringing the gruesomeness and horror to life is an eclectic cast that includes Josh Hartnett, Eva Green and Timothy Dalton. The show is created, written and executive produced by three-time Oscar nominee John Logan (Hugo, Gladiator), and also executive produced by Sam Mendes (Skyfall).
“As the show sort of settles into itself,” Hartnett tells us, “there’s a lot more mystery and intrigue, and it becomes more of a thriller, I think.”
But that first episode does contain some gruesome elements, Hartnett says, and some of the graphic elements could be made out in the trailer.
Hartnett plays Ethan Chandler, the only American character, who is an actor in one of the Wild West shows popular at the time, which traveled the world and gave many people a mythological sense of the American West. Though Hartnett’s character plays a cowboy sharpshooter, that does not necessarily guarantee he’s a similar type of swashbuckling hero in the world of Penny Dreadful.
“He’s not very pleased with himself,” Hartnett says of Chandler. “There’s something very dark in his past that he’s running away from. … Something’s eating at him. It’s kind of the last day that Ethan Chandler wants to be alive [as the series begins]. Every character [in the series] has its moments, and also has its questionable moments.”
Among those other characters is the mysterious Vanessa Ives (Green), who begins to show the disheartened Chandler into the supernatural underground lurking beneath London just as he is reaching his darkest moments. Chandler finds himself intrigued by this world, and decides to stick around, becoming the audience’s gateway into Victorian horror.
“A lot of the characters from Victorian literature, or then what became Universal Horror classics, are all living in one place, in London,” Hartnett shares. “Every generation has their version of those. For some reason, those stories … are just universal.”
Hartnett adds that, “The story takes place over the course of a few months. All these [other] characters that John Logan has created have some sort of secret. They have to either learn to trust or distrust each other, and that’s the world that we’re dealing with.”
With the story taking place over a few months during the course of its initial eight episodes, might Penny Dreadful become an anthology series, like the currently popular American Horror Story, and maybe akin to the original “penny dreadful” works from which the series takes its title?
“This is these characters in this situation,” Hartnett says. “Of course, new characters will be introduced, but it’s a much more linear approach than that show. There could be another season [if it’s popular].”
It should stand a good chance of being popular given its familiar, yet reinvented, roster of classic creatures, which may be refreshing in this age of TV and movie horror that seems dominated by serial killers or zombies.
“I like horror as allegory,” Hartnett tells us. “I think you can say a lot in this context because you can say a lot more overtly and it doesn’t feel like you’re preaching. … You never know what audiences are going to be up for, until they are up for it. Nobody would have expected The Walking Dead to be such a success when that came out. But I wouldn’t compare this to The Walking Dead. I don’t know what I would compare this to.”
Penny Dreadful airs Sundays at 10pm ET/PT on Showtime, beginning May 11.
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Jim Fiscus/Showtime