Penny Dreadful
Showtime / Sky
📌 Pin it
John Logan's Penny Dreadful gathers the monsters of Victorian literature — Victor Frankenstein and his creature, Dorian Gray, Count Dracula, Dr. Jekyll — into one shadowy 1891 London, bound together by the medium Vanessa Ives (Eva Green) and the explorer Sir Malcolm Murray (Timothy Dalton).
The period detail is pure Gothic Victoriana: séances in Belgravia drawing rooms, penny dreadfuls hawked on street corners, Grand Guignol theatres, taxidermy shops, and the fog itself as a character. The show borrows its title from the cheap sensational pamphlets that thrilled Victorian readers.
Victorian fans love it because it treats the era's literature as a living mythology rather than homework. Eva Green's Vanessa Ives — a devout Catholic medium wrestling with demonic forces — is one of the great performances in period television.
More in TV & Film
All →
Victoria
Jenna Coleman stars as the teenage queen who gave the era its name — crowns, crises, and a great love story.
Ripper Street
Whitechapel, 1889: the Ripper is gone, but H Division's detectives still walk the gaslit streets.
North & South
Gaskell's mill-town masterpiece: a clash of classes, a battle of wills, and the most beloved slow burn in period drama.