Critic Reviews

What makes Penny click is the chemistry among the characters, especially the psychic and the gunslinger, who end up seducing the viewer with their seductive encounters. They make you forget this is an action show

Penny Dreadful is a surprising show, one that offers both some putrid rotting at the core of London’s soul and a way of going about excavating humanity’s inherent darkness in a different and unexpected way. That is easily worth a penny, and maybe more.

The macabre, marvelous Penny Dreadful does nothing halfway. As the saying goes, in for a penny, in for a pound.

Already TV's most literate and stylish horror drama, "Penny Dreadful" is adding new and intriguing elements to the ambitious structure as the third season begins.

The best horror show on television returns with a season that feels flush with heightened ambition, visual artistry, dramatic energy, and - of course - fresh blood.

Elegant and erotic in its savage yet sordid beauty, the third season of John Logan's stylishly literate monster mashup never loses focus despite being, quite literally, all over the map. [9-22 May 2016, p.18]

This John Logan creation promises an intriguing summer pastime, for an eight-week run anyway.

Some of its mumbo jumbo may hurt your head, but the last words of Episode 2 are precisely on point. They whet the appetite for more, more.

The sly second season of Penny Dreadful finds its drama in characters trying to shake shameful pasts that won’t stop haunting them, and finds rich menace in cunning folk and shape-shifting spirits who make thralls and puppets out of our heroes, robbing them of authenticity and self-determination.

On the strength of its cast, the beauty of its design, and the sheer joy it gets from its homages, it’s the sort of dreadful that’s mostly a delight.