Penny Dreadful - 'Ebb Tide', 'Perpetual Night' and 'The Blessed Dark'

So very music video.

Okay, so they kind of spammed out the last couple of episodes, so I've held off on reviews until I could binge the final three, which are - as it turns out - the actually final three.

In 'Ebb Tide', Lily dispatches her army of the night to bring her the disembodied hands of their erstwhile abusers and Dorian is clearly having second thoughts about the whole arrangement, as the planned immortal coup becomes some sort of grass roots ultramilitant suffrage movement in which he is basically irrelevant (kind of the story of his life in Penny Dreadful.) Consequently, by the end of this episode he has delivered her into the waiting tranquilisers of Drs Frankenstein and Jekyll to be remade into a 'proper woman'.

"Shoot. Just shoot. Why doesn't she shoot? Do you think she
knows how to shoot?"

Elsewhere, Kaetenay has a vision of destruction, and Ethan returning to find Vanessa a vampiress. Dr Seward has a clash with crazy Renfield when she catches him listening to her recordings, in which she diagnoses Vanessa with some sort of massively multiple personality disorder.

Vanessa, meanwhile, counsels John Clare to love the him that he is now and return to his wife and child, also mentioning their past acquaintance, which of course he does not recall. He follows her advice and is incredibly accepted, telling his family the truth about what happened to him and being welcomed back into the home.

Vanessa then compares note with Catriona 'Cat' Hartedigan, and learns that Dracula is not that vampire. As a flesh-bound fallen angel, he has a reflection, can walk in the daylight, eat garlic and all that, but he can be killed. In fact, in human form he can be killed just like anyone else. So Vanessa gets her gun, goes over to the museum and...

Damnit, Ives!

And we end the episode with Lily a captive and Vanessa surrendering herself to a sweet-talking prince of darkness (who interestingly uses all the same lines as Hecate did on Ethan. 'I love you for who you are. I want to embrace the darkness with you. Lead me to the throne of Hell and I will follow. Love me, fear me, do as I say and I will be your slave.' Dramatic parallel, or did they just go to the same evil pick-up guru*.)

Still, it's not all doom and gloom.

"Who the Hell are you?"
"I believe I'm the woman who just saved your life."
Oh, sick burn!

Okay, actually it is all doom and gloom, and 'Perpetual Night' opens with London wreathed in poisonous fogs as Sir Malcolm, Ethan and Kaetenay return (so apparently Rusk is dead.) Rats swarm on the docks and frogs are thronging in Dr Sewards' office, where she faces down a would-be masterful Renfield and clobbers him proper.

Returning to the mansion, Ethan finds a slaughtered wolf in his bedroom - bastards - and the team are attacked by Dracula's scuttling minions, fighting them off with the help of Cat, who moves straight into take charge mode to cauterise a bite to Sir Malcolm's neck. She then goes off with Sir Malcolm and Dr Seward to question Renfield and find out where Dracula is.

Actually less scary than just Wes Studi. I mean, if you saw
this guy you'd be 'crap! werewolf!' whereas regular Kaetenay
you'd be all 'oh fuck! It's Wes Studi! Cheese it!'

Ethan finds Dracula and is mobbed by the scuttlers, but fortunately wolfs out and - joined by wolfy Kaetenay - slaughters a whole lot of minions before settling in for an expository chat in which Kaetenay explains that he once thought he was given his 'power' to save his people, but ultimately infected Ethan so that he could save the world.

Lily appeals to Frankenstein's better nature, telling him the story of her greatest pain - the death of her infant daughter; thanks for that - and he releases her, realising that his 'cure' is monstrous and breaking with Jekyll, who gives the parting news that his hated father is dead, rendering him the new Lord Hyde. No chemicals here; Henry is already Jekyll and Hyde combined. Frankenstein then leaves the test chamber and immediately runs into Sir Malcolm and company leaving Renfield's cell, so at least he won't be left out of the finale.

Oh, this isn't going to end well.

During the meanwhile, Dorian kicks Lily's army out of his crib. Justine stabs him in the heart for betraying Lily, which obviously does nothing to him. She refuses to go back to her old life, however, explicitly choosing to die instead of living as a slave to men. Lily returns to find her body on the floor and leaves Dorian to his hollow life. I'd kind of been expecting her to trash his portrait, but there you go. Neither of them does anything else in the series anyway, their plot ultimately a closed loop save for its brief intersection with Frankenstein's.

And thus the team meets up for the final clash with Dracula in 'The Blessed Dark'**.

Whatever else, the final 'two-parter' contains some of television's finest
'walking in fog' moments.

Actually, I think a bunch of the above may have happened in 'The Blessed Dark', but such is binge watching, and after the prep the meat of the finale is the showdown.

Kaetenay and Ethan go in through the sewers, because they're the ninjas, and get into a mad scrap with sewer minions, because they're not very good ninjas. The others confront Dracula, who tells them that Vanessa is his - so much for the whole 'I long to serve you' bit - but that they can leave because she doesn't want them hurt, and by the way I totes turned your daughter to use her as bait, lol. Unsurprisingly, Sir Malcolm isn't having it.

"Clearly some people got hurt."

The ensuing fight scene is actually pretty badass. I can not accuse Penny Dreadful of ever skimping on its action scenes. Sir Malcolm and Cat are pure fucking hardcore, while Dr Seward's childhood in tough, East Side New York has left her with top notch combat skills and after some early flailing even Frankenstein finds his metier in the form of a length of pipe. Team Wolf bust in just as things look bleak, and Ethan is sent to find Vanessa as Dracula enters the fray in person and starts lobbing our heroes - who make the error of attacking one at a time, which is a disappointingly bush league mistake for seasoned monster punchers - around the room like rag dolls.

Ethan finds Vanessa, who tells him that she needs to die to save the world. They recite the Lord's Prayer, he shoots her and Dracula goes off looking all sad.

"So... white walls again."

Funeral, poetry, the end.

I'm not even kidding. After three seasons we close on some sort of Anglican guilt trip. A lot of the series has been focused on faith, and in particular Vanessa's faith, but it's such a conservative salvation. Actually, that's pretty apt to so much of the series, which has always toyed with 'damn the patriarchy' while being a little too cosmically patriarchal to quite convince. It was disappointing to go back to Vanessa as a largely hapless pawn incapable of controlling her own power (although in fairness, this perhaps applies to all characters with power, including Gray, the werewolves and John Clare, whose son dies and whose wife kicks him out for refusing to get Frankenstein to transform the boy into an immortal abomination, by the by,) and disappointing that we'll never get to see the team joining Lyle in Egypt to battle mummies (barring spin off possibilities; Dime Novel, perhaps.)

I've never been Penny Dreadful's biggest fan, but it showed - and I would say squandered - a lot of potential in Season 3. While it wanted to be edgy, great chunks of its core concepts remained mired in stodgy conservatism - love is good, sex is bad; a woman's power exists to service men (or masculine entities); faith = conventional religion; minority characters service the narrative of the European leads - leaving the better aspects of the show somewhat adrift. It also took much too long to get to a place where the flawed (deliberately) characters were exposed enough to become sympathetic or likable, leaving Season 1 in particular hard to invest in, and Dorian Gray always seemed somewhat pointless here.

On the upside, the show was never less than lavish, with its mix of gorgeous interiors, grey streets and grim hovels, free flowing blood and brutal action. Alas, it never quite found its flow, and its swift ending after suggestions of six seasons (and a movie?) hints that perhaps it had terminally lost its way.

Here's hoping that Eva Green's next role has more opportunities for her to smile.

* A series of evil seminars given by Bowie's Goblin King, perhaps.

Penny Dreadful - 'No Beast So Fierce'

"The invitation said 'don't dress for dinner.'"

Penny Dreadful continues to ramp up the tension as the third season moves towards its conclusion.

In New Mexico, Rusk and the Marshal show up to arrest everyone, and given the logistical problems they accept an invitation to dinner. Talbot harps on the importance of hospitality while Malcolm tries to urge him to reconcile with his son. Talbot insists that Ethan say grace, which he does with a Satanic perversion of the Lord's Prayer. The the Marshal promises a reckoning for his dead men, so Talbot shoots him, and the whole meal really goes downhills from there. Rusk dismisses Talbot's assumption of the upper hand and sure enough, Ethan lets Hecate off the chain and a massacre ensues. Talbot flees as his men are cut down. Rusk takes a bullet, as does Hecate, before Kaetenay shows to finish the last of the guards in the dining room. Hecate dies, the jury is out on Rusk, and the others storm the chapel where Talbot is making his last stand. In the final reckoning, Ethan is unable to pull the trigger on his own father, so Malcolm does it for him.

Back in London, Hyde and Frankenstein recap their plan, while John Clare tries to connect with his sick son and jst ends up terrifying him. Lily and Dorian begin running a series of seminars on the efficient murder of men, with Justine getting way too into it for Dorian's taste. The human hairless cat is also clearly not pleased that Justine, by reminding Lily of all that she was and has lost, is threatening his place in his partner's affections.

"Do make me cut a bitch!"

Justine catches Frankenstein poking about, and drags him in for filleting, utterly ignoring Dorian's instructions unless approved by Lily. He offers Lily his 'cure', but she points out that 'their' happiness was truly only his and that she is quite at home with her pain and rage now, thanks ta. Justine is pretty narked that she decides to let Frankenstein go, feeling that man parts are reason enough for a filleting.

The series has done a bit of a reversal on Lily, hand in hand with revising poor, heartsick Victor into a toxic quagmire of misogyny. At the end of last series she was pretty much 'immortals rule, mortals drool,' but the recruitment of her army of the oppressed seems to have ignited a more idealistic fire in her, now in increasing contrast to Justine's 'kill 'em all and let God sort them out' approach to the Y-chromosome.

"I'm starting to get the feeling that my life might be better without men."

Men get pretty short shrift this week, and the show moves further from its weirdly conservative beginnings as Mr Lyle - on his way to Egypt to kick off Season 4's arc plot - recommends another expert to Vanessa; a trouser-wearing action thanatologist named Catriona Hartdegan, who clearly knows a thing or two about Dracula and is willing to take Vanessa on trust when she says that Dracula is trying to seduce her. She counsels Vanessa to seek company, which sends her to Dr Seward, who suggests that she reconnect with Dr Sweet and give him the chance to choose for himself if he will risk death for her sake. Naturally, Sweet/Dracula is thrilled to bits by this turn of events, and sexy times are had.

From the beginning, Penny Dreadful felt like a show that wanted to be transgressive, but was actually a bit of tame sensationalism. With Season 3 it is finally starting to flex some muscles on its female characters, bringing Lily back from would-be monstrous overlord to immortal militant suffragette, and surrounding Vanessa with strong, female advisers to replace the ersatz family of male protectors who have abandoned her. As a result, this is easily the strongest season to date.

Penny Dreadful - 'This World is Our Hell'

I've been through the desert on a horse with no name...

After last week's Vanesstravaganza, we return to our other protagonists and subplots, most notably those taking place in New Mexico.

With the posse on their heels, Hekaty-poo and Ethan discuss the shortcomings of their parents, and cutting between Kaetenay and Ethan we hear the story of his past sins. It turns out that he was part of a massacre of Apache during his time in the army, before killing his CO and handing himself over to the Apache. Kaetenay decided he should work out his guilt and used Ethan as a weapon in the Apache's war of survival. He took them to his father's ranch to steal guns and horses, where blood was spilled.

Tiring of the fugitive life, Ethan agrees to let Hecate use his blood to summon creatures of darkness against their enemies, and even as Kaetenay is setting out to murder the posse, snakes burst from the ground. I won't say all Hell breaks loose, because they're probably saving that for the finale, but there is certainly a quantity of Hell operating under less than absolute supervision. In the confusion, Sir Malcolm shoots Rusk's sergeant, and Rusk swears bloody vengeance on Ethan.

"And you're sure you know how electricity works?"

Back in London, Frankenstein 'electrifies' Jekyll's serum for injection into Balfour's prefrontal cortex, promising it will remove his madness, along with all memory of bad things, leaving him as innocent as a lamb. He chides Jekyll once more for his temper and they begin to prepare for the capture and 'treatment' of Lily.

Stopping off in a cave, Ethan tells Hecate the story of the first Apache, which I suspect may not be entirely genuine mythology. He explains that Coyote stole the son, allowing the creatures of darkness forth, until one man drove them back and restored light. Hecate suggests that this might be prophecy, not mythology.

Approaching the Talbot Ranch, Hecate and Ethan's horses die. They, Sir Malcolm and Kaetenay are all captured by Talbot's men, and Ethan instructs them to leave Kaetenay to die in the desert. The rest of them are brought to the ranch, where Sir Malcolm meets Talbot Snr, a worthy slaughterer of Indians and all around racist empire-builder played by Albert Finney. He also feels it necessary to dump on scotch for no immediately apparent reason.

"I may be an American, but I'm so evil I'm played by a Brit."

Talbot explains that he wants Ethan to repent. In conversation with his son, he describes the Apache attack, when Apache armed with his own guns broke into the chapel and murdered the rest of his family, including his other son and young daughter. He demands that Ethan repent or die, to which Ethan replies that he is done with guilt and repentance.

'This World is Our Hell' suffers from following the excellent 'Blade of Grass' and thus being the episode to lead us back into Season 3's increasingly diverging plotlines and the general problem of my not giving a flying fuck for the lives of any of these characters. Seriously, they can all die in a fire for all I care. Hecate is rapidly emerging as the moral centre of the New Mexico storyline, simply by virtue of not pretending to be anything else but the Devil's attack monkey.

I also have no idea why people keep casting Albert Finney - a fine actor, to be sure - as Americans.

Penny Dreadful - 'A Blade of Grass'

"Miss Ives; how do you feel about bottle episodes?"

We're almost to the middle of the season, which means it's time for Vanessa Ives backstory theatre (traditionally a strong point of the show,) and this time we're also doing a bottle episode.

Vanessa plumbs her memories of the asylum where she was committed following her breakdown, to experience the gamut of Victorian mental health treatments - force feeding, hydrotherapy and so on - in the care of the rigorously scientific Dr Banning and a kindly orderly who will one day be transformed into the murderous juggernaut we currently know as John Clare.

The episode begins with John - for want of a better name; he isn't allowed to give one for reasons of protocol - trying to persuade Vanessa to eat, and we see the relationship between them begin to evolve as his kindness wears down her walls and he begins to fall in love with her. He tells her of his family and his son's sickness, which requires him to work in such a cruel place, and it is clear that he believes in the methods of the doctors even if he doesn't understand them. Still, he warns Vanessa that if she doesn't act as if she were 'normal', she will be subjected to trephination, a procedure even he recognises as crude.

"So, you feel you are under attack?"

Then, as she begins to tell John her story, things get weirder. Dr Seward tells her that she is not able to pull her out of the trance, and John is possessed by Vanessa's tormenting angel. Dubbing himself Lucifer he strikes at her with barbs and accusations and professions of love. Then another arrives, a presence which also manifests as John and clearly overwhelms and terrifies Lucifer; the presence of Dracula. This is a terrific moment, with Rory Kinnear compelling as the two vast presences, the lords of spirit and flesh, and Eva Green once more turning in a powerhouse performance, by turns repulsed, enthralled, cowed and finally, triumphantly defiant. Moreover, the fact that Lucifer cowers in the presence of his flesh-bound brother - Dracula claims that Lucifer has become nebulous, deprived of belief - sets aside any nagging worries that going from fighting the Devil to fighting Dracula would be a step down for our protagonists.

While Patti LuPone provides admirable support, this is Green and Kinnear's show, and provides considerable substance for Vanessa's next meeting with John Clare. As for the other characters... Well, who knows; there are no subplots at work here, just a tour de force two-and-a-bit character bottle drama which maintains the standard of past backstory episodes.

Damnit. I think I might actually like this season of Penny Dreadful.

Penny Dreadful - 'Good and Evil Braided Be'

"I am so fucking British."

Kaetenay and Sir Malcolm take the racist express to New Mexico in search of Ethan, who is now dreaming of his sort-of father showing up all bloody faced and yelling incoherently, which can't be good.

Rusk and the Marshals look over the scene of Ethan's escape. On the edge of town, Ethan tries to impress on Heckaty-poo the merciless nature of the desert and himself, but the latter is undercut when he's the one who gets upset by her murdering a man and his wife for horses. She lays it out that she's intent on following or leading him into hell to become the Devil's hitman or whatever with her as his worst gal, and is willing to murder literally everyone in the world for that to happen.

They flee across the desert, pursued by Rusk and the US Marshals. The latter are pretty useless, firing wildly at Ethan from half a mile away, stopping when they finally realise that there's a woman with him. Rusk is all poo-poo firearms, and cautions the Marshal that he might want to start believing in the occult. I really hope he doesn't die like a chump, if only because the Marshals are bigger arseholes than he is and I begrudge them the satisfaction.

Kaetenay and Sir Malcolm find the dead ranchers and are concerned about the company Ethan might be keeping.

"Well, this can't be good."

Back in London, Vanessa works some mojo on Dr Seward to try to convince her that her 'delusions' are the real deal; so far it seems like a no-score draw. Vanessa then goes on a date with Dr Sweet which leads to a circus mirror maze, where everyone else disappears and weird-looking-skinny ghoul gets all up in her face, telling her the master was with her 'in the white room where there is no day or night'. She decides she's too dangerous for Sweet to be around and dumps him.

John Clare is back in London. He sees Vanessa meeting Sweet and looks wistfully happy for her before heading off to look for his former family. After roughing up the current owner of the building, he finds them in a slum, his son dying of cholera, and like any good dad starts mugging passing strangers to give them money. Maybe next he'll start cooking high grade meth.

Sweet/Dracula pummels his goon for scaring off Vanessa and lets the other ghouls tear him apart in a feeding frenzy. The super-strength punch is an impressive and restrained use of practical effects to display Dracula's casual power, and the piranha pile is creepy as hell.

As David Balfour descends back into raving madness, Frankenstein proposes to use his research to make Jekyll's serum permanent.

No, I'm not including a picture of the bloody three-way. This
isn't that kind of blog.

Lily and Dorian bring Justine further into their plans, explaining their intention to basically murder and terrorise their way to secret power with an army of invisible women of the street, poo-pooing the gentle methods of the suffragettes. They give Justine the opportunity to kill her former tormentor, which she does, before engaging in a gore-slicked three way with her benefactors.

I know I've criticised the show for being sex negative before, but I'm not entirely convinced that one murder would really undo all of the psychological trauma of a decade of brutal abuse. Of course, it's equally possible that Lily and Dorian don't give a rat's arse about their recruit's psychological health.

Vanessa has Seward hypnotise her to recover memories of her time in an asylum, where the orderly who brought her food was the future John Clare (dun-dun duh!)

Season 3 of Penny Dreadful continues to be a massive improvement on what went before. Okay, Dorian and Lily are still pretty gratuitous, but at least they have a point at last. It is also hard to see how - if at all - the separate plotlines will come together, but time will tell.

Penny Dreadful - 'Predators Far and Near'

"I was going to avenge my people, but I got high."

Lily and Dorian return this week to open the show with a burst of egregious violence. Attending a live torture porn show, they bust out, murder the 'butcher' and his wealthy patrons and rescue the 'star turn'. The scene is interesting in large part for the characters' very different styles of murder, Dorian of course being an immaculate headshot ninja, while Lily is all about the knife. I suspect that the fact that only one of them is touched by what they do in any way will start to strain the relationship eventually.

Kaetenay contacts Ethan through dream magic, and Ethan dream-tries to dream-strangle his ersatz father. He threatens to scalp him, which the older man dismisses as a cheap Comanche scare tactic not worthy of an apache. We learn that Ethan came to Kaetenay covered in the blood of his family, and that he also killed a senator's son. Kaetenay explains to Sir Malcolm that he hated Ethan too much to let him die, and Malcolm compares this to his relationship with Vanessa.

Time of the month again.

Ethan is being taken to his father and waiting until the moon waxes. One of Kaetenay's people recognises him and he warns her to leave the room, then kills everyone else. One of his captors almost gets a shot of, but Heckaty-poo witches out of the wall and kills him. This makes two curb-stomp massacres in the space of a single episode.

Ethan is also being pursued by Inspector Rusk, who refuses to hand responsibility over to the US Marshals, apparently because he's a dick. Seriously, he's all 'Imperial matter' and putting the boot in on national sovereignty.

Jekyll introduces Frankenstein to his work in calming violent insanity at Bedlam, demonstrating on a man named Balfour. It's clear that he has a bit of a chip on his shoulder about being dissed for his race after his dad abandoned his mother, and I suspect some fools are going to die over that one. Frankenstein sneaks off to see Lily and is all pathetic at her, which oddly doesn't win her back. Meanwhile Lily and Dorian are recruiting their foundling into their crusade of revenge and dancing in circles around the ballroom. Again.

Honestly, it's a bit early for this reveal to have much punch.

Vanessa unburdens herself to Dr Seward, who amazingly doesn't freak the fuck out and call on Dr Jekyll at once. She instead advises Vanessa to for the love of God do something fun. Vanessa calls on Dr Sweet once more and invites him to a show after learning of his love for Jules Verne (I'm slightly disappointed that Nemo appears to be fictional.) He refuses coffee and goes off to listen to the wax cylinders of her talking to Seward, for he is Dracula!

Now, we don't know yet if he's, like, proper Dracula, or if Dracula is using him as some sort of puppet or meatsuit and when he meets Vanessa he really is, well, Sweet. I suspect the latter, especially since otherwise putting the reveal this early lets the tension down too soon.

But Lily and Dorian are back, still dancing in circles, but I don't want to set their house on fire just to watch them burn, and that's not nothing.

Penny Dreadful - 'The Day Tennyson Died'

"Well, that all went splendidly."

And so, just a short time after finishing Season 2, here we are with Season 3 of Penny Dreadful, and hey hey, the gang's all here; or more accurately, the gang's all somewhere, but very few of them are 'here' relative to one another.

Vanessa is maundering in the big old house, with the windows shuttered and dust sheets everywhere, living on what must be fairly rancid milk and stale bread, the loss of friends and faith leaving her in an almost bestial state of self neglect. Into the long, dark teatime of her soul comes Mr Lyle, who advises her to visit an alienist of his acquaintance, the woman who helped him to come to terms with his own homosexuality. This she does, and discovers that Dr Seward is the identical descendant of Jean Claypool (aka the Cut-Wife,) her former mentor. The no-nonsense Seward instructs her to go away, do something different and tell her about it next day.

Dr Sweet also has a lot of forehead.

In deference to doctor's orders, she teleports to Scotland. Okay, first she's stalked by a creepy man with too much forehead and a pale looking kid (who goes to great lengths to assure her his pallor is due to anaemia of the blood and then calls her 'beloved', possibly quoting Tennyson or possibly just being creepy) selling memorial ribbons for the late Tennyson, then she goes into a building and I'm pretty sure emerges in Dunrobin Castle, although it could just be a very similar cabinet of dead things. There she bonds with naturalist Dr Sweet over the scorpions and discuss the need for someone to look at the ugly, disregarded creatures in the dusty cases. She goes home and opens up the house.

"Dr Frankenstein."
"Dr Jekyll."

Speaking of which, Dr Frankenstein is visited by an old school friend, whom he asks for help in destroying Lily. Dr Jekyll, however, offers instead to curb her homicidal, monomaniacal urges and 'tame' her for him, using his research on chemically controlling his own colossal outsider's rage.

In the Arctic, Caliban/John Clare/the Creature has a flash of memory from his life and abandons his freezing shipmates to walk home across the ice like a freaking boss.

In New Mexico, Ethan is being transported by train, when his escort of US Marshals and the civilian passengers in the adjoining car are massacred, all save Hekaty-poo, who is able to stave off the shooting by playing the 'defenceless female' card until Inspector Rusk arrives, having survived thanks to going to the buffet car for tea. The killers carry Ethan off, intending to return him to his father, which amuses him rather.

If Timothy Dalton and Wes Studi are coming for you, you know you're in for a
world of pain.

And finally, in Africa, Sir Malcolm is brooding rather drunkenly. A mysterious man lends a hand when he is mugged, and explains that he is Kaetenay, an Apache from New Mexico and apparently something of a father figure to Ethan (he describes him as 'almost' being his son in such a way that I kind of suspect that he feels Ethan's soul was aiming for his own child and missed.) He tells Sir Malcolm that Ethan needs both their help, so they need to head for New Mexico like the couple of well-seasoned badasses they are.

To round things off, Seward's secretary steals Vanessa's fee for ale and whores money, but gets nabbed by an unseen force, menaced by the pale folk, and is finally ordered to report on Vanessa by an awesome and so far off-screen presence that names itself Dracula (a reveal somewhat spoiled by the fact the secretary already copped to the name Renfield.)

Season 3 starts on a high note, but then again we haven't had a sniff of Gray and Lily yet, and there is a threat that we're going to split the party for the whole season between London and New Mexico. I miss Sembene, but on the upside we have Wes Studi now, and that's awesome. We also have Dr Jekyll - who in this version is apparently Indian - although as a sympathetic and supportive influence in Frankenstein's life I'm fully expecting him to get torn in half next week.

Penny Dreadful - 'Memento Mori', 'And Hell Itself My Only Foe' and 'And They Were Enemies'

The Man.

So, just a quick zip through the last three episodes of Season 2 of Penny Dreadful ahead of its return for a new run next month (by which I mean next week.)

'John Clare' gets mad with Frankenstein, while Lily starts acting oddly. She gets into a fight with Clare in which she lapses into Oirish and babbles a lot, dropping in somewhere that she wants to live forever and rule the world. Naturally then, she's going to go and see Dorian Gray again. Meanwhile Dorian's lover finds his hidden portrait. She declares her love for him anyway and he poisons her, because he's a dick.

It's been a tough day.

Lyle does a face turn and explains the whole mystical shebang: Two brothers rebelled against God and were banished; one to Earth to be the Master Vampire, the other to Hell to be the Devil. Both seek for the Mother of Monsters (but not Lady Gaga) to restore their power and assail the gates of Heaven itself, plunge the world into a second darkness, unlimited rice pudding etc, etc.

Sir Malcolm is afflicted by enchantment and tries to kill Frankenstein, who has made a pretty good shot of that himself with his drug addiction, but Sembene pushes him into a shuttered up ballroom and shouts at him to 'know yourself'. Which he does, and immediately goes after Evelyn Poole single handed for rewenge.

He gets captured.

"I love what you've done with the place."

The remaining team summon Ives and Chandler back from their retreat to mount a rescue mission, but Chandler warns against a night raid since a) the Nightcomers are more powerful then and, b) reasons. Vanessa agrees, but then goes off alone (since that always works so well,) while Chandler is getting a creepy, bad magic booty call from Hekaty-poo, who tells him he is destined to stand at the right hand of Lucifer and she is so into that.

Thus the attack is on for the night of the full moon.

Sembene promises not to let Chandler hurt anyone else. They have a touching bonding moment and god damnit they're going to kill Sembene, aren't they!

They raid goes off poifectly: Sir Malcolm and Frankenstein are tormented by the ghosts of their mistakes, Lyle gets Mirakuru lifted by a Nightcomer and Chandler and Sembene are locked in a stairwell as the moon rises. Sembene insists that Chandler not kill himself, because he is chosen by God, and Chandler wolfs out and kills him.

"Ladies."

Vanessa confronts Evelyn and gets chatted up by Lucifer, working through the vent dummy of Vanessa herself, which fair play is creepy as fuck*. He calls her 'Amaunet', harping back to that Egyptian link from Season 1, which would also make him Amun, the Hidden One; probably not quite the same one as in Sleepy Hollow, although you never can tell. After all, if Sleepy Hollow and Bones share a continuity, practically anything is possible. Despite a bit of the old Black Mercy where Lucifer offers her a happy, normal life with Chandler in exchange for her soul when she dies. She tells the Devil to spin on it and crushes the dummy's face.

That's right, Chandler. Fluttershy is disappointed in you.

Evelyn tries to murder Vanessa, and Hekaty-poo releases Chandler, presumably hoping to dispose of her mother and Vanessa in a twofer. He rips out Evelyn's throat, but stays his hand from killing Ives. Oh well done, Chandler; and where was that spark of humanity when you were eating Sembene's throat? Oh, I know, I know, he wuvs her, but frankly having basically confessed that Sembene was a true friend and one of the few he had ever known... In My Little Pony that would have counted for something**.

Frankenstein tries to get Lily to come home and she laughs him off, so he shoots her and Gray. This does not go well, but they leave him alive because he's contacted for Season 3/to wallow in his own failure.

Season 3's big bad: The White Tie Supremacists.

Clare is betrayed by the blind girl who seemed to like him and locked up to be an attraction at the waxwork's new freak show. After brooding for a bit, he rips the doors off his cage, kills the showman and his wife and sneaks past the blind daughter, leaving her to find the bodies.

Sir Malcolm takes Sembene back to Africa. Chandler turns himself in to be hanged, but instead is deported back to America. Vanessa goes off to brood somewhere. This is the kind of misery you can end on when you're confident of a third season.

Penny Dreadful season 2 remains a sordid, weirdly sex negative confection, but is a massive improvement over Season 1. Once more, Vanessa's backstory provided the most interesting single episode, but the arc plot was better and more coherent and the Nigthcomers less head scratchy than the vampires who apparently sleep at night and their inexhaustible supply of blonde goths. And hey, Dorian Gray is finally involved in the actual plot. On the downside, they pulled an Agents of SHIELD on us and killed Sembene. My cynical side expects him to be replaced with a chirpy, cockney soldier.

* And in this show, fuck is always creepy on some level.
** You know you're a dad when you find yourself comparing everything to My Little Pony.

Penny Dreadful - 'Little Scorpion'

After last week's 'experiment', Sembene explains the transformation to Ethan through some fairly bullshit pseudo-tribal ecology ("the leopard consumes the monkey and becomes both leopard and monkey...") Sir Malcolm is increasingly lah-dee-dah about anything that isn't Evelyn Poole, even dismissing Vanessa's collapse at the party to hysteria and shaving off his beard and power moustache.

"Sheep's blood - because I'm worth it."

With London looking increasingly dicey, Vanessa and Ethan head off to the moors, for study, contemplation, sexual tension and angst. She ventures into the Book of Vile Darkness and he murders sheep and trees while they both dress like something out of a knitwear catalogue. They trade shooting lessons for dance classes and almost get it on during a thunderstorm before Vanessa decides that they're both too dangerous. This pastoral idyll is disturbed by a run in with the dickhead landowner who burned her friend, provoking Vanessa to magically murder him with his own dogs to avenge the Cut-Wife, slightly before Ethan can shoot him, partly in a failed attempt to stop Vanessa becoming a killer and partly because he was a complete dick. Seriously, like... beyond dickish.

This was adorable, and thus doomed.

Speaking of beyond dick, Dorian Gray is apparently over Angelique and homing in on the amnesiac innocence of Lily. Because London is fucking tiny, he takes her to the waxworks where John Claire works, so we presume violence may ensue. It does, but not entirely in the expected fashion. On the way home, Lily stops into a pub to pick up a random bloke for sex and murder, the gruesome waxworks apparently awakening her inner creature.

Back in the plot, Lyle and Frankenstein discuss the whole great beast, Devil, Ogdoad thing they've got going on. Honestly, the Egyptian thing is pretty stretched at this point; we're in full-on Abrahamic dualism mode and everything else is window dressing.

Penny Dreadful - 'Glorious Horrors'

"As your host, I hope I am offending you all equally."

With the forces of darkness closing in, it's party time! Dorian Gray drops in to the fortress of stiff upper lips with invites to Angelique's coming out ball just as the team are noticing something amiss with the luvved up Sir Malcolm's reaction to his estranged wife's suicide ("cut her throat? I'll have to change that carpet.") After a visit to the waxworks and a blackmail visit from the maimed and excessively optimistic Pinkerton (seriously; it's quite adorable that he thinks Ethan is the badass) Ethan cries off the ball due to lycanthropy, but Victor attends with Lily, Sir Malcolm takes Mrs Poole and Vanessa and Hecate Poole go separately and stag. Dorian pisses Victor and Angelique off by homing in on Lily (told you that wasn't going to stay happy,) while Hecate torments Vanessa with magic. Meanwhile, Ethan has Sembene chain him up in the basement and finally has someone who knows exactly what happens to him.

Although he crosses paths with the rest of the cast, Dorian Gray remains a largely pointless source of fan service, and otherwise mainly throws a spanner into the works of another incidental plot. On that topic, neither Vanessa nor Dorian appears to recognise Lily; I guess it's hard to see past the consumption and the accent, and they did at least keep Ethan out of the picture so far. Anyway, that leaves about half of the episode to formal plot, which pretty much comes down to 'Ethan is the hound of God, Mrs Poole is after Sir Malcolm and Hecate seems determined to fuck with Vanessa's head just to prove a point or something.' It's possible that Hecate is just feeling pissy because Mr Lyle pronounces her name 'Heckaty-poo.'

So, yeah; mostly filler this week.

Penny Dreadful - 'Above the Vaulted Sky'

"Shall we dance?"

"All sad people love poetry. Happy people love songs."

In the wake of the Nightcomers' ninja assault, Team Dreadful batten down the hatches, investing in stronger doors and locks, all the rituals and charms of protection you can shake a wand at, and lots and lots of guns. This does precisely dick to stop the Nightcomers popping up in some sort of astral form while Vanessa is praying, but does mean that when Inspector Rusk comes to ask Chandler some questions, he is in the process of buying a suspicious amount of ammunition for a retired sharpshooter. Rusk has also learned that Chandler is using an assumed name, and has a man tailing him, but the police are so shit that the tail is spotted and evaded more easily than a dude with one eye and a conspicuous leather half-mask where Chandler ate the rest of his face off.

The Creature is impatient to get to know 'Lily', but she is clearly repulsed by him despite his heartfelt account of their imagined love (it is clear he's thought a lot on the subject) and he goes off to sulk in the catacombs. Vanessa meets Victor's 'cousin' in another delightfully light scene and immediately spots his non-familial affection for her - seriously, they're adorable, and therefore almost certain to die horribly - before going to work in her soup kitchen. Here she has another heart to heart with 'John Clare', and teaches him to dance. I would feel so much more sorry for him over Lily if he didn't have a good friend in Vanessa and a seriously interested blind girl at the waxworks that he is completely ignoring whenever he goes all 'poor me'. Oh well, I guess he's socially awkward.

Face touching.

Speaking of socially awkward, a spiteful attack from a former client prompts Angelique to resume male garb, but Dorina assures her he loves who she is, not how she was born. It's like a rogue scene from Sense8 and would be terribly positive and uplifting if a) this weren't Dorian Gray, perhaps the most infamous destroyer of innocence and betrayer of love in 19th century literature, and b) it had one iota to do with the rest of the plot. Seriously, Gray just seems to be here to fuck things and look blandly anguished. I don't know if it's more or less annoying that he isn't even tangentially associated with the plot by fucking actual characters, although I guess it's nice that he's found someone as inhumanly smooth and hairless as him.

Date rape.

But hey, it's not just Dorian and Angelique getting it on this week. Vanessa and Ethan don't actually get groiny, but they they have some intense non-sex, and when Lily shelters from a thunderstorm in Frankenstein's bed, inevitable outcome is inevitable. Meanwhile, Evelyn Poole is using the love whammy - delivered via her spiked ring - to seduce Sir Malcolm, and her voodoo dolls to drive his wife into insanity and suicide. The climax - pun intended - of the episode is three intercut sex scenes and some intense stair staring from Vanethan, with the eroticism seriously undercut by including Lady Murray slashing her own throat while being menaced by hallucinations of her zombie children.

I've said it before and will say it again: Penny Dreadful is like the Victorian era, in that it is both obsessed with sex and hates sex. Three sex scenes - one is going to lead to violence, one is date rape and one is incidental to the plot and also unlikely to end well, juxtaposed with death, because sex in this show leads to madness, evil and death, like... every time. If Vanessa and Ethan had gone the full montage, she would no doubt be possessed by the devil again. If Sembene and Lyle feel left out, I hope they realise what a bullet they've ducked. What, I have to ask, is this show's entirely literal fucking problem?

Penny Dreadful - 'Evil Spirits in Heavenly Places'

"I don't care if the ratings are down, I'm not getting naked this episode."

We open with Vanessa wrapping up her tale from last week, although given that some of that was stuff she couldn't have seen, it's hard to know what she's actually said.

With the flashbacks over, it's time to get back to the various plots in hand. Lyle ropes Chandler and Sir Malcolm into the puzzle of the Verbis Diabolis fragments, which appears to be a single narrative over multiple artefacts and languages, as transliterated by a possessed monk based on the autobiography of a demon.

The next day, Ethan sees the advertisement for the waxwork exhibit of the aftermath of his wolf-out, while police and press examine the scene of the baby-snatching murder. Hecate tries to seduce Ethan, but botches her accent. The Creature talks to the blind daughter of the waxwork family, developing a bit of sparkage even as Frankenstein is clearly getting a bit of a hankering for 'Lily', apparently adjusting their fictitious relationship out to second cousin while dress shopping with Vanessa.

Dorian Gray is pwned at table tennis by his new flame. I'm so glad he's still in this show.

Ethan and Sembene argue over who gets to do the washing up, then three Nightcomers sneak into the house all stealthed up like the Predator to steal a lock of Vanessa's hair as part of their plan to match Ethan 'tooth and claw', although given that they curb stomp the entire crew - less the absent and self-professedly non-action Frankenstein - I'm not sure what the fear is or why they don't just kill him.

This is not something that is often seen, and honestly I think directors ought to
let Eva Green smile more often.

Back in the 'now', Penny Dreadful resumes one of its main flaws, specifically its rambling side stories, in this case the Frankenstein romances and anything to do with Dorian Gray. That being said, the former does give us a scene where the frightfully awkward Frankenstein asks Vanessa to help him dress shop for Lily. What could be unbearable is lifted by a light touch, and the chance to show Vanessa at ease for once. Released, however briefly, from the burden of relentless existential angst, she suddenly seems a more complete character.

Similarly, Ethan's uncovering of the disguised Hecate lifted him from mere pinball of plot to a more active agent, and his kitchen scene with Sembene was another delight, and shows something that Penny Dreadful has overall been missing up until now. Yes, it's a tale of darkness and fear and horror, but what's the point of Victorian monster punk if you're not having any fun?

I'm also nursing a theory that the actual hero of the series is Sembene, the tireless protector and baker of quite magnificent buttercream tortes.

I'm still not completely won over by the series, but I will allow that 'The Nightcomers' and 'Evil Spirits in Heavenly Places' have really upped its game.

Penny Dreadful - 'The Nightcomers'

Because who said Satanism can't be stylish?

It's flashback theatre time, as Vanessa opens up to Ethan about her past (apparently including stuff she couldn't possibly have seen, but never mind.)

After the first waking of her powers and Mina's plea for help (recounted in last season's flashback,) Vanessa goes to a witch who lives in a lonely cottage for help. Once convinced that Vanessa isn't evil in herself, the Cut-Wife - essentially a herbalist and hedge abortionist - takes her in and trains her to use her abilities, reading people's pasts in their minds and futures in the Tarot. She also shields her from the first attacks of the Nightcomers, and explains that witches can be Daywalkers - insightful, powerful, but human - or give themselves over to the Devil in exchange for greater power and vastly prolonged life. She herself is at least three centuries old - her cottage was given to her in perpetuity by Cromwell - but the Nightcomer Evelyn has not aged in all that time.

The Cut-Wife is my favourite character of the season so far. As this is Penny
Dreadful, this means she dies by the end of the episode. It's actually surprising
that it wasn't the Creature what done it.

Denied and defied, Evelyn seduces the local landowner and - no doubt reveling in the irony and hypocrisy - uses him to whip up a witch hunt. The already dying Cut-Wife is burned alive and Vanessa is branded, but at no point dragged past the ring of protective stones which keep the Nightcomers from getting her, so that's lucky. The Cut-Wife leaves her pupil with her name - Joan Clayton - the cottage and her copy of the not-the-Necronomicon, as well as a warning that if she embraces the Verbis Diabolis and the magic within the Book of Vile Darkness, she will cease to be human and become a Nightcomer.

'The Nightcomers' is, hands down, my favourite episode of Penny Dreadful so far, thanks largely to Patti LuPone's turn as Joan Clayton, and perhaps in part the fact that it doesn't have Dorian Gray in it. In fact, aside from Poole's dominatrix turn seducing the landowner, there's no sex at all, and it's frankly a relief. Also, no babies were eviscerated in the course of the narrative, although there is a middling graphic abortion scene. I also liked the distinction between Daywalkers and Nightcomers, even if LuPone didn't get to tell Evelyn that some motherfucker's always trying to ice skate up a hill, and the fact that this season is overall more coherent than the rambling mess of vampires and Egyptian Gods in season 1.

Penny Dreadful - 'Verbis Diabolo'

"We are men of action; lies do not become us."

So, apparently Ives lost the pray off, as represented by drawing a scorpion in her own blood, so Sir Malcolm recommends she do some charity work in a soup kitchen of sorts. Here she meets the Creature and discusses philosophy and religion. Meanwhile, Evelyn Poole gives Sir Malcolm the mystic love whammy, while Frankensteni tries to rehabilitate the new Creature by leading her to believe she is his amnesiac cousin (and thank fuck, she's lost the bloody Oirish accent.)

Recruiting antiquarian linguist and occult dabbler Lyle, Team Fuckwit plot to steal the only known sample of the Verbis Diablo from the British Museum in a desperately dull heist which involves nothing more dangerous than pretending Chandler is being snuck in to see the Museum's collection of porn (because in Penny Dreadful, everything has to connect to sex somehow.) Speaking of, Dorian Gray is chatted up by a painfully abrupt transsexual prostitute in a scene which just cements my conviction that the character is basically just there to be the one getting laid if there's no other sex this week.

It is revealed that Lyle is working for Poole, but I confess to being off my game by this stage as Hecate Poole brings her mother a baby, whose heart is placed in a doll of Vanessa Ives, for which scene absolutely fuck you, Penny Dreadful; you are not good enough to earn that sort of nastiness. This is the show's problem in a nutshell; it's all shock and no substance. Given the ruthlessnes and brutality of our heroes, there could be a complex exploration of the nature of good an evil, but Evelyn Poole casually murders subordinates, bathes in the blood of slaughtered girls, snogs her daughter and puts baby hearts in ventriloquist's dummies, which pretty much eliminates any need of discussion. Sure, Chandler is a moody loner who occasionally blacks out and massacres a pub full of people, but the other guy eviscerates babies.

As well as subtlety, the show falls down on the characters, none of whom are really interesting enough to hold the attention. Ives continues to vacillate between strength and weakness with no real rhyme nor reason, and Chandler's New Mexican stoicism is a bar to involvement. While I hated the first season's fixation with running Dorian Gray through the full gamut of pants, I liked Chandler most when Gray broke through some of his reserve, and the focus on Sir Malcolm and his relationship with the missing Mina made him one of the more accessible - while still one of the least likeable - characters.

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.