It’s a given law of televisual thermodynamics that no matter how good an episode is, if the collective dramatic and character-based momentum doesn’t carry over through the series then the public will lose interest, and possibly their shoes. With that in mind we face the next episode of Penny Dreadful, for which we’re not only going to venture into spoiler territory, but we’re going to have to set up a small boarding house within the heart of spoiler territory that serves a highly-praised continental breakfast. Just so you know.
Anyway this episode picks off not too long after the events of the last one, with Josh Hartnett hiding from his run-in with the supernatural at the bottom of the nearest bottle of whiskey like the disillusioned cowboy that he rightly is. While ensconced in booze, he happens upon Billie Piper’s inconsistently-accented Brona Croft: an atypically amicable Northern Irish lady of the night. Given that this episode opens with a fellow prostitute being reduced to a bloody stump of an arm doesn’t bode terribly well for dear ol’ Billie. Despite this, and her propensity for occasionally coughing/spitting/spewing up blood, Hartnett still holds quite the torch for her throughout the episode. This would be all fine and dandy if not for this episode’s other new character and winner of this week’s ‘Biggest Cause For Eye-rolling Award’.
Imagine it: Billie Piper enters a lavish, opulent mansion of a house. Inside the house stands a foppish, equally opulent gentleman staring at a titanic wall of portraits. He turns to Miss Piper and says “My name is Dorian Gray”. Cue mass exasperated groaning and harrumphs. Reeve Carney’s interpretation of Dorian Gray is as hedonistic as you might expect, and as unlikeable as someone who tries to rut every female thing that moves must surely come across. So well done Reeve Carney, keep this up and soon nobody will remember you played Spider-man in that arse-awful Broadway musical. Unless I make a mention of it. Which I may do every week now. Sorry.
Penny Dreadful is on Sky Atlantic, Tuesdays at 9pm
With the new characters in play it’s time to get back to our tale of spooky Egyptian vampire cults and super-grisly murders! Except, well… not this week so much. This episode is very much an exploration of our character’s secrets and fears, or as my mum calls it, airing out dirty laundry. Josh Hartnett receives a telegram from America hinting at a troubled past with the law (which to be fair we expected from the get-go), whereas more time is given to our other principal characters and their respective troubles. Not to dismiss Hartnett’s Ethan Chandler, but everyone else’s problems do ring that bit more powerfully.
This time around, for example, we get a lot more time with Frankenstein and his creation, and I must admit (oh I must) that I really rather enjoyed the dynamic between the two. Now I did say last time, somewhat falsely, that Rory Kinnear plays the creature, which as it turns out isn’t actually the case, which a glance at IMDB will prove (many apologies Alex Price, you don’t look like Rory Kinnear at all on further inspection). Oh well. Anyway, Alex Price really sells the Creature as a fragile, child-like being learning everything from the ground-up again. Whilst I do wish that Victor wouldn’t use so many large words when talking to his obviously-still-learning creation (who ends up being called Proteus, after a light spot of pointing at Shakespeare), he acts very much like a mother bird to his gentle creation, and at the risk of using another bird analogy, Price soars. When not amazed by the world there is that tragic thread that Price’s Proteus can remember the life he once had before being reanimated, which comes from words he hasn’t been taught and songs that linger in his head. It’s altogether a rather sweet set-up. A set-up that is used to great horror when Proteus gets ripped in two by THE ORIGINAL FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER (who actually IS Rory Kinnear!)? It may risk going all M. Night Shyamalan, but dang man. What was that about?
Also sitting unsettlingly in the realm of “what the whaaaaat?” are the events between Malcolm Murray and Vanessa Ives. Whilst they enlist the help of Victor to find out, y’know, what the heck that vampire thing was they killed last week, Malcolm seeks to offer his help with regards to the ripper-style killings, in his usual, intense manner. Eva Green meanwhile does her mysterious strutting thing. The crux of the episode, entitled “Seance” is, quite fittingly, a séance. Held at the abode of their mutual acquaintance, museum curator Ferdinand Lyle, Vanessa encounters our incredi-sleaze Dorian Gray who promptly tries it on with her. Because Dorian Gray, man. Any the way, while participating in Lyle’s séance (orchestrated by his own hokey mystic) Vanessa actually does get possessed by… something. Something called Amanet. Amanet uses Vanessa to word-vomit a series of c-bombs, f-bombs and terrible secrets about dear old Malcolm Murray, unveiling a whole dark mess of trouble. She then storms her way into the night and has steamy-stranger-street-sex while Dorian Gray looks on thinking “But I’m over heeeeeeeeere”. It’s all rather well acted, especially Dalton’s Murray as his past is so callously thrown around before him in public, an event he faces with both frailty and frightful anger. I just kinda wish they hadn’t relied on repetitive use of cuss words. I mean, I’ve got nothing wrong with cussing, but it just seemed a bit lazy to have a possessed person espousing a swear-soufflés for the purposes of offence or whatever.
In one of the show’s last bits (not including Frankenstein’s scene outlined above) Malcolm meets Lyle for further details on those damned hieroglyphs that have spent so much of this episode not being mentioned. Lyle tells him they detail the conjoining (that means rutting) of two Egyptian gods, Amanet and Amun-Ra who should they ever conjoin (rut) the world will end. This assuredly cuts to Vanessa Ives, the supposed current vessel of Amanet, which leaves us pondering who could possibly be the present incarnation of the undying lord Amun-Ra? (cough cough Dorian Gray cough cough).
So overall? Not too shabby. A little reliance on overused tropes in some places, but we’ll see how the next episode deals with the Dorian-Gray-shaped slack and the Frankenstein’s-Monster-shaped intrigue. Also everyone else.
No Comments