Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Penny Dreadful .... gone, but never forgotten!!

The Showtime series Penny Dreadful pulled off a fast one in their third season finale, by bringing things to a conclusion. That is right! They stealth inserted a series finale to the surprise and disappointment of their hardcore fanbase. I count myself among them and have to admit that given series creator John Logan's asseration that this was planned all along, some things in hindsight seem a little suspect to me.
Why, if this was the grand finale envisioned all along, did Logan basically send his stable of story-wise tightly integrated characters so far afield individually this year only to bring them all together in the last episode? Also much was teased and/or intimated about what might have been season four content (do I hear "Imhotep" anyone)? Oh well, if this was where the tale of Vanessa Ives simply had to end, as a fan we were treated to a course of sugar to make the medicine go down.

I do feel as if viewers who have yet to give Penny Dreadful a chance will subsequently come to regret not having supported the show while it was airing, as this excellent television production has struggled to find a sizable enough audience to have perhaps changed the mind of its own creator. Needless to say the cast of Penny Dreadful (Eva Green, Timothy Dalton, Josh Hartnett, Rory Kinear, etc.) was superb and rarely has a shortrun series managed to be of this high quality only to fade quietly away in the most unsuspecting fashion.

To those who may still be on the fence for what this series had to offer, if you have any familiarity with a terrible film called The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen starring Sean Connery from some years past, based upon the Alan Moore comic book; then this show was literally like that concept but done absolutely correctly. I am going to miss Penny Dreadful in the worst possible way!

1 comment:

bzak said...

Howdy,

I too was surprised at the seemingly abrupt end to the show. Coming as it did not that long after the series finale of "Person of Interest", it was a double whammy for me.

Funny how emotionally invested we can become to fictional characters.

Brian Riedel