Penny Dreadful - 'Fresh Hell'

Ah, nuts; Dorian Gray is still in this thing. And... well, the rest of them. The new (as regular) characters at the extreme right
are Evelyn Poole (Helen McCrory) and Ferdinand Lyle (Simon Russell Beale).

Regular readers may recall that I was less than impressed by big-noise Gothic-historical frock-porn gorefest Penny Dreadful's first series. Regular readers may also have gathered that I kind of enjoy watching shit that I don't actually like*, so I'm going to give Season 2 a go.

After an epic night of larging it, Ethan was just prime for a
cheeky Nandos**.

'Fresh Hell' opens with the aftermath of Chandler's 'funny turn'. For a man who wolfed the fuck out and ripped apart an entire pub full of people in a noisy and spectacular fashion, he's noticeably undisheveled and besmirched by only a few spatters of gore. I'm just impressed that the show passed up an opening for some nudity. Perhaps this is a sign of increasing maturity.

Being a responsible and sensitive soul, he reacts to the reminder that he sometimes blacks out and kills a whole shit tonne of folks who happen to be in the vicinity (seriously, I'm sure no-one really remembers, let alone cares about, the thuggish Pinkertons sent to bring him home, but at least some of those people were just out getting a drink and a meat pie) by deciding to slope off to pastures new. Before he does, he stops by for a chatette with Vanessa Ives. She's reluctant to see him go, but no doubt to his disappointment (and again to the show's credit) doesn't attempt any carnal dissuasion, thus relegating her to second least responsible character possessed of an appalling supernatural force, behind Chandler.

Anyway, apparently feeling bad about the lack of nudity so far, three bald, naked women with white skin and scars attack the coach where Ives and Chandler are talking. There is a fight, and eventually the women are driven off when Ives shouts in tongues at them, morphing into dark-haired chicks in cloaks (apparently they, like Chandler, incorporate their clothes in their transformation, which I find weirdly hard to accept.)

"It's a project, Dad; something we can do as a family."

Elsewhere, Frankenstein and his creature are getting Brona ready to become the creature's bride, while at the same time the creature secures employment at a dysfunctional family waxworks to support them. Speaking of dysfunctional families, there's a really messed up vibe between the creature - now going by 'John Clare' - and his creator, hints of Frankenstein fancying his new creation, and a suggestion that Clare may instead fall for the blind daughter of his employers. Anyway, by the end of the episode 'Brona' is revived, but she hasn't spoken so we don't know if her terrible accent has survived.

You can tell she's evil because she's bathing in the blood of a
murdered girl and smoking.

In conference, Ives explains that the women, whom she and Chandler insist are nothing like vampires despite basically looking just like them, are 'Nightcomers'; witches. They are scarred because their demon master rakes his claws in their flesh to mark them as his***. The Nightcomers are led by blink-and-you'll-miss-it Season 1 recurring character Evelyn 'Madam Kali' Poole. In Season 1 she appeared as a medium and briefly flirted with Sir Malcolm; in Season 2 she's gone full-on Bathory with a blood bath and her gaggle of sexy witch followers, chief among them her inappropriately blood-lusty, quasi-incestuous daughter Hecate, which is one of those names that recalls a powerful female figure of myth but is always rattled out in an inappropriately cutesy rhythm so that it sounds like a character from a children's book: Heck-uh-tee. It may be the accurate choice, but I'd go for Heck-ah-tay myself.

I think we might be going to see a lot of this sort of thing.

Poole's big scene is a conference with her minions about their failure to capture Ives (they blame her unexpected use of the Devil's language, and the presence of Chandler, 'Lupus Dei') the chosen bride of their master Lucifer as we may recall, in which she casually offs a quarter of her workforce after giving her a speech about how triumphant Roman generals would be reminded they were mortal. This speech makes no sense in context, and her casual demand that the remaining Nightcomers 'get rid of that bitch' just makes her seem like a sulky adolescent with all the management skills of Darth Vader.

Before the climactic scene of the bride's rebirth, there's just time for Poole to engage Ives in some sort of long-distance chant-off, the two of them each praying in their own room - one spartan, the other oppulent - while imaginary (maybe?) Nightcomers appear behind Ives and the weather gets all pathetic fallacy. It would be far more tense if we were given any sense of the actual stakes involved in the clash.

Apparently the TV watching public at large - or a substantial proportion of them, at least - really dig Penny Dreadful. On the strength of 'Fresh Hell'****, I am not a convert. Vanessa Ives remains the helpless bitch of her own alleged awesome, Chandler is increasingly unsympathetic and basically no-one has any enigma left to them at this point. Possibly the best thing I can say about this episode is that there was no Dorian Gray, although I'll be amazed if we get through the season without either Evelyn or Hecate Poole riding that bike (simply because they're there now and haven't yet.)

* And besides, Dracula, my Gothic-historical frock-porn gorefest of choice, was cancelled, for which I blame Thomas Edison.

** Nothing says finger on the pulse like a joke that will be incomprehensible in a year's time.

*** Because demons are into non-consensual B&D.

**** An odd title, quoting as it does a woman who wouldn't even be born until the very twilight of the Victorian era.