"Do Not Be Afraid"
Penny Dreadful is gothic horror at its most literary and its most visceral. John Logan takes the monsters of Victorian fiction—Frankenstein's creature, Dorian Gray, Dracula—and weaves them into a single tapestry set in 1890s London. But the show isn't fan fiction. It's an exploration of faith, damnation, and what it means to be human when you're made from corpses or cursed with eternal life.
Eva Green plays Vanessa Ives, a woman possessed by something ancient and terrible. She's the show's spiritual center—not a monster from literature, but an original creation who embodies the Victorian anxiety about female sexuality, religious faith, and psychological breakdown. Green's performance is ferocious. When Vanessa is afflicted, Green throws herself into possession scenes that are genuinely disturbing. When she's lucid, she's brilliant, wounded, and compelling.
Josh Hartnett plays Ethan Chandler, an American sharpshooter with a secret. Timothy Dalton plays Sir Malcolm Murray, an explorer seeking his kidnapped daughter. Harry Treadaway plays Victor Frankenstein, young and obsessive. Reeve Carney plays Dorian Gray, immortal and bored. Billie Piper plays Brona Croft, a consumptive prostitute who becomes something else entirely. The characters interweave across three seasons, their stories spiraling together toward Vanessa's fate.
The production design is sumptuous—Victorian London rendered in fog, gaslight, and blood. The show spares nothing in its depiction of horror: severed limbs, resurrection sequences, exorcisms that leave the actors bruised. But every violent image serves the themes. This isn't torture porn; it's Romanticism taken seriously, the sublime and the terrible combined.
Characters & Acting (9): Eva Green is incendiary. The supporting cast—Timothy Dalton, Josh Hartnett, Rory Kinnear as the Creature—matches her intensity. Every performance commits fully to the material's darkness.
Visual Spectacle (9): The production design creates Victorian London as a place of beauty and horror. The creature effects are practical when possible, CGI when necessary, always effective.
Resolution (7): The third season provides an ending, though it wraps quickly after a slow build. Vanessa's fate is both inevitable and earned.
"Séance" (S1E2) — Vanessa's possession at a party. Eva Green's descent into madness is unforgettable.
"Closer Than Sisters" (S1E5) — Vanessa's origin. Faith, desire, and destruction intertwined.
"The Day Tennyson Died" (S3E1) — The final season begins. The scope expands. The end approaches.
US: Showtime, Paramount+
UK: Sky Go