'Penny Dreadful' goes back to horror’s roots

Monsters are fascinating because they represent out-of-control appetites. We humans struggle to rein ours in, so it’s extraordinarily cathartic to watch those hungers run wild. When mere humans give in to such urges, it’s easy for envy and judgment to cloud our enjoyment; when the ravener is a beast, we can revel in the excess. Penny Dreadful features a rogue’s gallery of Victorian favorites: Victor Frankenstein and his monster, Dracula, Dorian Gray, a werewolf (maybe), and demons galore. But this is no retread of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

The character at the center of the action is the psychic medium Vanessa Ives. Former Bond Girl Eva Green delivers an epic performance that leaves no scenery without her teeth marks. Vanessa is the childhood best friend of Mina Harker (née Murray). Throughout the season, Miss Ives struggles with her inner demon: an evil Egyptian god who longs to bring about an apocalypse. The demon sees everyone's darkest desires, so the proper Miss Ives often finds herself blurting out everyone's inmost secrets. Green’s voice is a smoky, throaty delight as she switches between the earnest voice of Vanessa and the slinky insinuation of the demon who torments and possesses her.

If Vanessa’s struggles are the through line of the show, then Sir Malcolm Murray’s desires are the monstrous heart. As a young girl, Vanessa stumbled through a hedge maze on his property to find Sir Malcolm having sex with her mother. Witnessing that scene broke something in Vanessa's mind. She is discovered in the act of seducing Mina's fiancé and is roundly condemned. Psyche shattered, the demon offered his solace. Her ensuing possession, mistaken for psychiatric illness, led to her treatment by a Victorian alienist. It didn’t help, and she continues to grapple with the voyeuristic monster within.

Sir Malcolm’s lusts are the cause of much misery. An African explorer and a great white hunter, his ambition to find the source of the Nile has already cost him his only son. He spent most of his days plundering both Africa’s wealth and its women, destroying everything in his wake. In order to redeem himself ever so slightly, he wants to recover his daughter Mina, who has fallen into the hands of Dracula (as we all know from the Stoker novel). Vanessa seeks him out, wanting to atone by helping Mina, and they forge a strange partnership. Cruel Sir Malcolm selfishly drives Vanessa on in her possession, long after she wishes to be put out of her misery.

Dark discoveries

Assisting Sir Malcolm is Dr. Victor Frankenstein, whose hunger for knowledge has led him down a dark road. When the show begins, he has just animated a man made of dead men’s body parts. A gentle creature, we watch him slowly learn to speak and understand the world — until he’s brutally killed by an earlier, less charming creation of Frankenstein’s. Caliban was shunned by Frankenstein for his fearful visage and now works as a stage manager for a Grand Guignol-style theater. What the monster wants most is a woman to love him, and he will kill anyone who gets close to Dr. Frankenstein until he obtains his heart’s desire. So Frankenstein shoots heroin and hides until he can find a way to give Caliban what he wants.

That’s not all he shoots, though. He’s taught the fine art of marksmanship by Ethan Chandler, played by Josh Harnett. Ethan, an American fleeing some undisclosed familial disgrace, begins the show as a sharpshooter in a traveling circus. Sir Malcolm hires him as muscle in his attempts to locate Mina. Chandler meets a consumptive Irish prostitute named Brona (Billie Piper, AKA Rose from Doctor Who) and falls in love. He's gentle with the ravaged Vanessa and even shows compassion for a captured minion of Dracula's.

Harnett plays Ethan with easy cowboy charm, which deceives the viewer into thinking that he’s the least complex character on the show. It's a tribute to Penny Dreadful's subtlety (and Harnett's acting) that Ethan's dual nature is the show's greatest mystery. There's a Ripper-style killer on the loose, and Ethan has a deep vein of violence underneath his sweet demeanor. He also has an unexplained bite wound on his hand, a way with wolves, and a surprising sexual attraction toward the show's Lothario, Dorian Gray (who also seduced Vanessa and Brona, making for a bizarre love quadrangle). I'm looking forward to watching him unzip his skin and showing us who he really is.

In the penultimate episode of the season, Sir Malcolm, Ethan, and Dr. Frankenstein babysit Vanessa as she battles her demon. It's tough for any possession not to be derivative of The Exorcist, but Eva Green's epic performance transcends cliché. At the end, freed of her dark passenger via an unexpected exorcist, she reveals that she knows where Mina is. The finale is Sunday, and I am on the edge of my seat wondering how all of these lusty monsters will be able to save anyone, much less fight Dracula, who represents the ultimate unbridled appetite.

Unlike its namesake, Penny Dreadful isn’t just cheap, sensationalist exploitation (I’m looking at you, True Blood). It’s quite a feat to take iconic monsters who have been scaring people for over a century and put them together in ways that can still shock and surprise audiences. With knowing meta-irony, the old monsters can be made new again, and Penny Dreadful reminds us why: We’re still hungry for their stories.

For Paula Berman's review of another favorite horror TV show, Hannibal, click here.