'Penny Dreadful' Leads Viewers Down Dark Road in Series Premiere (TRAILER VIDEO)
Showtime debuted its new ethereal series, "Penny Dreadful," on Sunday. The series is scheduled for an eight-episode run and is already a hit with fans.
"Dreadful" tells the story of a spiritualist named Vanessa Ives who is looking for someone to join her on a mission to locate a girl who was turned into a vampire. Ethan Chandler, a Wild West show performer, has to make a big decision: does he give up the life he knows and join this mysterious woman and her colleague, Sir Malcolm Murray? After much reluctance, and quite a few gory and violent scenes, Chandler does make the decision to go along with Murray and Ives.
Ives feels intense guilt over "letting" his daughter be bitten and turned into a vampire; it's clear that he loves his daughter and wants her back, no matter what it takes or what form she is in. Ives, meanwhile, is tormented by something from her past, which has yet to be revealed. When she prays in front of a crucifix, it turns upside down and spiders come pouring out of it to surround her.
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"Was I not responsible?" Ives asks after an apparition taking the form of the missing daughter, Mina, appears. "But for my transgression, would any of this have occurred?"
Viewers were introduced to Dr. Frankenstein towards the end of the episode. Ives, Chandler, and Murray need his help to figure out what would cause a person to turn into a beast with fangs, an exoskeleton instead of skin, and hieroglyphics from the Egyptian Book of the Dead printed on the inside of the body. Frankenstein is fascinated by the body and does not hesitate to begin examining it thoroughly, finding the hieroglyphics, which obviously mean something, but what?
There are numerous questions to be answered in such a short time frame. "Penny Dreadful" is only scheduled for eight episodes, and with one down, there's a limited time in which to wrap up all the mysteries.
"Penny Dreadful" airs Sunday nights on Showtime.
Watch a trailer for the series here:
