Farewell Penny dreadful...but what's next?
Last month, a great fantasy series with epic ideas and motion picture production values came to an end. Of course, so did Game of Thrones, but that’s not what I’m talking about. After three seasons Penny Dreadful has finished and by that I don’t mean we’ve had the seasonal finale plastered all over the papers and it’ll be back next year, I mean that’s it, that’s your lot, folks, there’s no more, nada, nothing, not a sausage.
Which is a shame really as Penny Dreadful was one of the bravest bits of programming I think I’ve ever seen on mainstream television. It’s worth remembering here that, where HBO is pay-per-view and has a reputation for adult drama, Showtime is a subsidiary of CBS with all the caveats that brings. The decision to make a prime time drama for TV involving gore, fantasy and non-traditional leads would have been unthinkable ten years ago. The success of True Blood and the sudden emergence of Game of Thrones changed all that and it could be argued that Penny Dreadful was ShowTime’s response to HBO’s success but I don’t think that this is the case. There were far more obvious projects that could have been optioned if they had chosen to go down that route. From Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time behemoth (which has now been optioned by an as yet un-named TV studio) to Terry Goodkind’s The Sword of Truth series, Showtime was spoilt for choice when it came to epic fantasy source material.
Instead they chose to go down the route of commissioning an original (sort of) series that brought together many of the characters that have been engrained in our psyche since childhood thanks to authors from two centuries ago. They did this in 19th century London, with actors who, whilst outstanding in their field, would not necessarily have been too well known in the United States (Josh Hartnett being the honourable exception here) which, I guess, was the primary audience Showtime were looking at when they commissioned it.
This was a risk as mash ups like this do not have a great track record when to comes to commercial success as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, in 2003, and any film which has the title of ‘someone v someone else’ have proven on more than a few occasions. The reason is usually the same, namely that we have far too many characters and personalities looking for their own screen time which means that spectacle takes over and storytelling is pushed to a poor second place. Also, these characters often lived in their own intricately created universes prior to being rudely displaced by a movie producer with one eye on box office revenue. The problem then becomes one of explaining the reason behind the sudden relocation of said characters and this is nigh on impossible in a two to two and a half hour film if you actually want to tell a story as well.
The solution to this? Well it’s two fold and Marvel seemed to have sussed the first one out quite nicely. It’s the origin story. Give your characters their own films prior to bringing them together in a blockbuster. If you get it right, the audience cares for your heroes, bleeds with them and cries on their behalf when tragedy strikes. More importantly from the studio’s perspective they will want to come back for more. And if you get it wrong? Well, you end up with a big hole in your balance sheet come year end.
As for the second solution? It’s something that has become far more respectable in the last fifteen years or so. Simply put it is television. Television allows you to build up your story and your characters over multiple weeks and multiple series so that you can explain character arcs and tell a story that would be far too complex to put on a big screen.
And this is where Penny Dreadful comes in.
Penny Dreadful has kind of flown under the radar since its inception in 2014. This is in large part because Game of Thrones has basically flattened anything in its path to all conquering global domination. But the fact that this series was made at all is in large part due to the completely unexpected success of the latter as well as the likes of American Horror Story, true Blood etc. No one expected GoT to get the audience it did when it was first shown on HBO in 2011 (seriously, was it that long ago)? I mean dragons, princesses and dwarves, Really? Those were the sort of things that should be confined to the bedrooms of geeky teens and geeky *ahem* post-teens, right? Well, it turned out not so much and HBO had a completely unexpected hit on their hands.
So, armed with the knowledge that the viewing audience now had an appetite for the spectacle, bloodshed and, let’s be honest, acres of nudity that fantasy brought, other channels decided to get in on the act.
But in Penny Dreadful ShowTime created a different beast. Where Game of Thrones was high fantasy, a sprawling, sometimes rambling and seriously bloody epic, Penny Dreadful was gothic, subdued and laced with an underlying menace that always hinted at something terrifying around the corner. Gone were the fields of soldiers, dragons and giants with magnificent citadels and castles as backdrops. In were alleyways soaked through with grime and poverty, salons that played host to society balls and old gothic houses you wouldn’t be caught dead in (even if you were dead). Penny Dreadful did dark, smoky and Victorian better than anybody. The gore was used sparingly but was all the more shocking for that when it did appear and you were always close to the victim due to the nature of the scene and the excellence of the screenplay.
The next thing that the show’s creators did was a thing of (in my opinion) genius. They went out and got a cast that, whilst not necessarily household names, had for the most part been trained in the theatre and who were all at the absolute top of their game. Combine this with a screenplay that has some of the most sublime dialogue in television and you have a very potent combination. The pathos brought to screen by the likes of Rory Kinnear playing John Clare AKA Frankenstein’s monster and the sheer versatility of Eva Green’s performance as Vanessa Ives anchor a show that sees characters swapping both gender and ethnicity. The fresh portrayal of characters like Dr Jekyll and Dr Seward are just two examples of an approach that brings new life to characters that have been familiar to fans of the genre for generations. It has also allowed the creators of the series to take liberties with the storyline in so much as John Clare is an eloquent creature aware of his predicament and, for the most part, far more human than those he is surrounded by and Dr Seward, far from being a bookish, slightly loopy, British physician is a woman from New York who killed her violent husband before escaping to London. Like I say liberties have been taken but to good effect. This is intelligent storytelling that sucks you in and scares the crap out of you on occasion.
So what’s next? Well, hopefully, this won’t be the last that we hear of the gothic genre. There are two more series of Game of Thrones scheduled. They’re going to be a little later coming to our screens than the last six seasons due to the fact that the world of Westeros is now in winter and that needs, you know, snow to film in. MTV has commissioned a second season of The Shannara chronicles and AMC are producing spin-offs to The Walking Dead. Combine that with the likes of Netflix producing output like Hemlock Grove, Shadowhunters and Stranger Things and it looks like, at least for now, that fantasy and horror fans will not be going short of options for their viewing pleasure.
But as for Penny Dreadful, well I guess it’s goodbye. It was dark and scary and utterly compelling while it lasted and, if there is any justice, it will find an audience and a life far beyond that which it had on Showtime and, over here in the UK, on Sky Atlantic.
Which is a shame really as Penny Dreadful was one of the bravest bits of programming I think I’ve ever seen on mainstream television. It’s worth remembering here that, where HBO is pay-per-view and has a reputation for adult drama, Showtime is a subsidiary of CBS with all the caveats that brings. The decision to make a prime time drama for TV involving gore, fantasy and non-traditional leads would have been unthinkable ten years ago. The success of True Blood and the sudden emergence of Game of Thrones changed all that and it could be argued that Penny Dreadful was ShowTime’s response to HBO’s success but I don’t think that this is the case. There were far more obvious projects that could have been optioned if they had chosen to go down that route. From Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time behemoth (which has now been optioned by an as yet un-named TV studio) to Terry Goodkind’s The Sword of Truth series, Showtime was spoilt for choice when it came to epic fantasy source material.
Instead they chose to go down the route of commissioning an original (sort of) series that brought together many of the characters that have been engrained in our psyche since childhood thanks to authors from two centuries ago. They did this in 19th century London, with actors who, whilst outstanding in their field, would not necessarily have been too well known in the United States (Josh Hartnett being the honourable exception here) which, I guess, was the primary audience Showtime were looking at when they commissioned it.
This was a risk as mash ups like this do not have a great track record when to comes to commercial success as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, in 2003, and any film which has the title of ‘someone v someone else’ have proven on more than a few occasions. The reason is usually the same, namely that we have far too many characters and personalities looking for their own screen time which means that spectacle takes over and storytelling is pushed to a poor second place. Also, these characters often lived in their own intricately created universes prior to being rudely displaced by a movie producer with one eye on box office revenue. The problem then becomes one of explaining the reason behind the sudden relocation of said characters and this is nigh on impossible in a two to two and a half hour film if you actually want to tell a story as well.
The solution to this? Well it’s two fold and Marvel seemed to have sussed the first one out quite nicely. It’s the origin story. Give your characters their own films prior to bringing them together in a blockbuster. If you get it right, the audience cares for your heroes, bleeds with them and cries on their behalf when tragedy strikes. More importantly from the studio’s perspective they will want to come back for more. And if you get it wrong? Well, you end up with a big hole in your balance sheet come year end.
As for the second solution? It’s something that has become far more respectable in the last fifteen years or so. Simply put it is television. Television allows you to build up your story and your characters over multiple weeks and multiple series so that you can explain character arcs and tell a story that would be far too complex to put on a big screen.
And this is where Penny Dreadful comes in.
Penny Dreadful has kind of flown under the radar since its inception in 2014. This is in large part because Game of Thrones has basically flattened anything in its path to all conquering global domination. But the fact that this series was made at all is in large part due to the completely unexpected success of the latter as well as the likes of American Horror Story, true Blood etc. No one expected GoT to get the audience it did when it was first shown on HBO in 2011 (seriously, was it that long ago)? I mean dragons, princesses and dwarves, Really? Those were the sort of things that should be confined to the bedrooms of geeky teens and geeky *ahem* post-teens, right? Well, it turned out not so much and HBO had a completely unexpected hit on their hands.
So, armed with the knowledge that the viewing audience now had an appetite for the spectacle, bloodshed and, let’s be honest, acres of nudity that fantasy brought, other channels decided to get in on the act.
But in Penny Dreadful ShowTime created a different beast. Where Game of Thrones was high fantasy, a sprawling, sometimes rambling and seriously bloody epic, Penny Dreadful was gothic, subdued and laced with an underlying menace that always hinted at something terrifying around the corner. Gone were the fields of soldiers, dragons and giants with magnificent citadels and castles as backdrops. In were alleyways soaked through with grime and poverty, salons that played host to society balls and old gothic houses you wouldn’t be caught dead in (even if you were dead). Penny Dreadful did dark, smoky and Victorian better than anybody. The gore was used sparingly but was all the more shocking for that when it did appear and you were always close to the victim due to the nature of the scene and the excellence of the screenplay.
The next thing that the show’s creators did was a thing of (in my opinion) genius. They went out and got a cast that, whilst not necessarily household names, had for the most part been trained in the theatre and who were all at the absolute top of their game. Combine this with a screenplay that has some of the most sublime dialogue in television and you have a very potent combination. The pathos brought to screen by the likes of Rory Kinnear playing John Clare AKA Frankenstein’s monster and the sheer versatility of Eva Green’s performance as Vanessa Ives anchor a show that sees characters swapping both gender and ethnicity. The fresh portrayal of characters like Dr Jekyll and Dr Seward are just two examples of an approach that brings new life to characters that have been familiar to fans of the genre for generations. It has also allowed the creators of the series to take liberties with the storyline in so much as John Clare is an eloquent creature aware of his predicament and, for the most part, far more human than those he is surrounded by and Dr Seward, far from being a bookish, slightly loopy, British physician is a woman from New York who killed her violent husband before escaping to London. Like I say liberties have been taken but to good effect. This is intelligent storytelling that sucks you in and scares the crap out of you on occasion.
So what’s next? Well, hopefully, this won’t be the last that we hear of the gothic genre. There are two more series of Game of Thrones scheduled. They’re going to be a little later coming to our screens than the last six seasons due to the fact that the world of Westeros is now in winter and that needs, you know, snow to film in. MTV has commissioned a second season of The Shannara chronicles and AMC are producing spin-offs to The Walking Dead. Combine that with the likes of Netflix producing output like Hemlock Grove, Shadowhunters and Stranger Things and it looks like, at least for now, that fantasy and horror fans will not be going short of options for their viewing pleasure.
But as for Penny Dreadful, well I guess it’s goodbye. It was dark and scary and utterly compelling while it lasted and, if there is any justice, it will find an audience and a life far beyond that which it had on Showtime and, over here in the UK, on Sky Atlantic.
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