‘Penny Dreadful: City of Angels’ Premiere Might Be Too Much of a Good Thing

Penny Dreadful: City of Angels premiere proved that the age old adage of “less is more” is an age old adage for a reason. 

This premiere episode runs into the same problems the original Penny Dreadful had during its 2014-2016 run on Showtime — way too many stories careening into each other without a true focus. Yet, the original series did something, particularly in its premiere and subsequent episodes that City of Angels does not — it takes a moment to give a few distinct, rich and compelling characters to focus on. 

In that series it was Rory Kinnear’s complicated Frankeinstein’s monster, Billie Piper’s wildly sympathetic Irish immigrant, Timothy Dalton’s hardened explorer, and Eva Green’s beguiling character that hooked the audience in for three seasons. City of Angels is not devoid of interesting characters. In the premiere alone we meet Tiago (Daniel Zovatto, Don’t Breathe) who’s torn between his status as the LAPD’s first Latin-American detective, and a member of the proud and religious local Latin American community under siege from the city police. There’s also Natalie Dormer’s (Game of Thrones) mysterious shapeshifter, Nathan Lane’s (The Birdcage) grizzled, mustachioed cop, a returning Rory Kinnear’s Nazi leader, amongst others. 

However, none of the characters are given ample time in their own storylines within which viewers can sink their teeth. Zovatto’s character becomes entrenched in three major narratives filled with too many attention-grabbing characters, and soon-to-be complicated storylines. His storyline is cut up too often by other stories that the momentum of his character to garner sympathy from the audience is hamstrung. 

Dormer’s character, Magda (a name I discovered in the credits, not the series), is so fascinating, but her character is so vague. We don’t get any reason for her motivations outside of her just wanting to watch the world burn? We see she has a feud with Santa Muerte (Lorena Izzo, Casual), a spirit worshipped by the local community, but also a spirit who really doesn’t seem to care whether those who worship her live? So, why should the audience care about this feud, or the Santa Muerte character (who is constantly referenced throughout the episode). 

The Nazi subplot, while anchored by the always terrific Kinnear, probably could’ve been pushed to Episode 2. This story is told in two parts — first through Kinnear’s doctor/sympathizer, and Thomas Kretschmann’s (Avengers: Age of Ultron) overtly Nazi architect (both political and structural) who tries to put Mad Men alum Michael Gladis into the mayor’s office. That is just way too much for a premiere. 

While the storytelling is overstuffed, and the focus of the episode is almost non-existent, there’s still a lot of good here. The set design is wonderfully and impeccably created — you can almost feel the dust blowing through the screen. And with a cast of this magnitude, you know strong performances were going to rise to the surface. Dormer, to the surprise of no one, is perfect in the role of a shape-shifting harbinger of doom. There’s a number of times where she appears in scenes and just melts into her role so effectively that you don’t even realize it’s her (particularly in her scenes with Gladis). Zovatto does a great job of portraying a man torn between cultures, however his performance is a bit overshadowed by his overstuffed storyline. The big surprise in the premiere is Nathan Lane, who plays so against type, playing a whiskey drinking, grizzled L.A. detective. It’s a role born for a grizzled character like Brendan Gleeson or Michael Rooker, but Lane absolutely nails it. He’s probably the most intriguing character in this first hour. 

Penny Dreadful: City of Angel is a show filled with good ideas. Unlike its predecessor, it does not pull classic supernatural characters from the pulpy pages of penny novels. Instead, it finds its monsters in the American society of the time (and well, right now)– racism, nationalism, Nazism, and bigotry. However, the series tries to tackle these big, sweeping issues all in one episode, and we still have not introduced a main character (a radio evangelist played by Halt and Catch Fire’s Kerry Bishe). With so many spinning plate and such little narrative focus, t’s hard to truly engage with any one character or any one story. This series demands patience, but, if it does not focus on its major stories or major characters properly, this series could easily suffer the same fate of the original and find itself canceled. 

Penny Dreadful: City of Angels airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on Showtime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WqFMwMiF3I