What is it?
The 2020 American dark fantasy TV show Penny Dreadful: City Of Angels (Season 1).
What is it about?
This is how Rotten Tomatoes describes this TV show:
A spiritual descendant of the PENNY DREADFUL story set in Victorian-era London, the next chapter opens in 1938 Los Angeles, a time and place deeply infused with Mexican-American folklore and social tension.
Rooted in the conflict between characters connected to the deity Santa Muerte and others allied with the Devil, PENNY DREADFUL: CITY OF ANGELS will explore an exciting mix of the supernatural and the combustible reality of that period, creating new occult myths and moral dilemmas within a genuine historical backdrop.
This chapter is a bold new vision that will employ all new characters and storylines.
My Thoughts
I had heard that another Penny Dreadful TV show was going to be made, but I did not realize that it was already out until I found out about it by accident when I saw the thumbnail for it on an online streaming video website.
After watching the trailer for it, my brother GC and I were not impressed, it did not look or feel like the previous Penny Dreadful TV show; and so we did not think that it should have the Penny Dreadful name in the title from what we saw in the trailer.
We did not see most of the original cast like Eva Green, who I think is a must for this series, I wish they would bring Eva Green back because without her there is no Penny Dreadful to me.
After the first episode we were correct that this show probably should not have Penny Dreadful in the name, only one original cast member returned for this show unfortunately, but it was better than we had expected.
This show could be a bit boring for some people at times, there was not enough supernatural or paranormal entities shown or explained, and while the acting and the show itself is not better than the previous Penny Dreadful show it was still better than expected.
Besides the other flaws, one huge flaw is that this show pretty much made it seem like African Americans and Asian Americans et cetera and their struggles did not exist, they did not even have one character in either of those groups who even got to talk from what I remember; and I only saw a few people in the background who even had dark-color skin.
That made no sense to me to basically make it seem like they did not exist while they had time to show and cover some other groups, much smaller groups at that (Jewish, homosexual, Mexican American, et cetera), that was a missed opportunity that would have made this show better and more diverse and more realistic.
They also did not bother to really explain the two entities shown in this show, one was barely shown and barely did anything at all, and I did not even know the name of the other or what she was really and her helper(s) et cetera.
Natalie Dormer did do a good job playing multiple roles / characters.
Even with those flaws they did manage to cover some racism, racialism, bigotry, police brutality, police corruption, political corruption, Nazism, family issues, relationship issues, et cetera along with some better than expected acting at times.
This season ended more abruptly and incomplete than I had expected, they could have finished up the story if they had not wasted time with some of the slower more boring parts, but it was still worth watching in my opinion.
The end,
-John Jr
John Jr's Blog 