'Penny Dreadful: City of Angels' Premiere: On-the-nose modern discourse ruins magic that made OG series a hit
If you were a fan of the original 'Penny Dreadful' in all its glorious, lurid delights, you might find its 'City of Angels' spin-off a bit tame in comparison. Eva Green and her body contortions always made you feel unhinged from reality rather than firmly embedded in it and add to that the menagerie of iconic literary figures from Frankenstein and his "Creature", to Dracula to Dorian Gray to a Josh Harnett's werewolf.
The Victorian setting further placed it away from our current reality, making it escapist entertainment. John Logan's "serious" treatment, however, did rescue these iconic characters from the campiness they were associated with after years of being repeatedly "adapted" and restored some of their earlier dignity and gravitas.
In contrast, there is no getting away from reality in 'Penny Dreadful: City of Angels'. It is brought clunkily into bright focus with absolutely no subtlety. Racism! Nazis! Angry Mexicans fighting displacement! Evil white man who admires Hitler! For anyone who turns on the news, the rise of neo-Nazis and far-right influences, race conflict, and massive real estate developments pushing out low-income communities, are all over the headlines.
It is admirable that John Logan has chosen to tell a story that looks at these things and shows how the same bad influences surface time and again by looking at these issues in 1938 Los Angeles. But clunky dialogue like "America First!" makes what should have been the subtext, the main thread. What suffers in the process is the supernatural elements that made the OG series such a hit in the first place. The "seriousness" this time around makes the script too heavy and slow as it concentrates on historical realities over the flimsy and half-baked supernatural fictional elements.
This time around, the supernatural angle is about Magda (Natalie Dormer), a demon, trying to make men do their worst, or as she puts it, pit "nation against nation, race against race, brother against brother". Why? Just because she can. Maybe she wants to increase the workload of her sister, Santa Muerte (Lorenza Izzo), the holy angel of death. After all, Santa Muerte has the thankless task of carting souls to heaven after death. It's easy to see why she has "no heart for men" -- she's tired of dragging their heavy-a** souls to heaven is why.
Logan's version of Santa Muerte is also an indifferent angel as Magda runs around Los Angeles in different guises, creating havoc. She is indifferent to everything except when her favorite Detective Santiago "Tiago" Vega (Daniel Zovatto) is messed with -- only then does she show up. Why Tiago is such a favorite of hers is also not explained -- at least not in the first episode. Maria Vega (Adriana Barraza) puts it well when she tells her that she "sleeps" while her "b***h of a sister" goes around sparking violence and death. Why Magda targets the Vega family is also unclear.
In the last scene of the episode, we see Tiago having to shoot his own brother Raul, (who is under Magda's spell) so that he doesn't end up killing his partner, Lewis Michener (Nathan Lane). This is after a policeman (again egged on by Magda) shoots at the unarmed crowd of Mexicans who refuse to be uprooted from their homes for a freeway.
By having Magda play such a role, of nudging those people inclined towards hate and violence, takes away from the agency of these people. Evil is banal, mundane, and commonplace but on this show, people do bad things because some fantastical supernatural entity is whispering in their ear.
To have a show reflecting complex realities of lived experiences and then cheapening it with "the Devil made me do it" defense is baffling. And If you think of Magda as only an external representation of the "devil inside" us all, then the series loses its supernatural edge -- which is what made the franchise special in the first place. The only scene in the first episode that even comes close to the magic of the original is when Magda "absorbs" her fake son into her body after a visit to the German doctor.
And let's just say what we are all thinking. We miss Eva Green and her compelling, "can't take your eyes off her" performance in the OG series.
Watch the 'Penny Dreadful: City of Angels' premiere episode on April 24 on YouTube and SHO.com. The 10-episode series will officially premiere on air this Sunday, April 26 at 10 pm ET/PT on Showtime.