Penny Dreadful aired the final episode of its first season last night and we’ve got a year to wait until the show returns for another season.
If you haven’t seen Penny Dreadful’s season one finale we suggest you stop reading now to avoid spoilers. If you have seen it and want to relive the action then keep reading.
After 8 episodes, Penny Dreadful’s first season came to a close last night and it threw up a few surprises before the credits rolled. Brona (Billie Piper) is looking very likely to be back in season 2 as the Bride of Frankenstein and Ethan (Josh Hartnett) revealed his true colours when he turned into a werewolf indicating he may have been the person behind the murders earlier in the season.
Sir Malcolm (Timothy Dalton) and Vanessa (Eva Green) came face-to-face with Mina (Olivia Llewellyn) and quickly realised that now she’s a vampire there’s little they could do to save her. RIP Mina.
Whilst we’ve largely enjoyed the first season, there have been frustrations along the way and some aspects of the show that definitely need improving before it returns for season 2. We’ve put together our list of 10 things we’d like for the next season.
1. A stronger story arc. Let’s be honest, the story was a bit all over the place and there was a definite ‘everything and the kitchen sink’ approach to the show. The main storyline of Sir Malcolm and Vanessa trying to find Mina at times played second fiddle to other less interesting sub-plots and at times the show was just plain meandering. In season 2 we want a strong story arc that pulls everything nicely together and progresses week-on-week.
2. Ethan to be outed as a werewolf to the core group. Now his secret is out it can only be a matter of time before his new friends discover that he’s much more than a gun-slinging side-kick. We want to find out if he is linked to the murders we saw at the start of the season and if he’s not we’d still like him to get tangled up in that unresolved story.
3. Sir Malcolm’s backstory. Ok so we got some glimpses but we want to know more about his time in Africa and his relationship with Sembene (Danny Sapani). How did the two come to be allies? There’s a lot of scope here and we want to know more.
4. Another juicy story for Vanessa. There’s no doubt that Eva Green’s Vanessa was the standout in season 1. From the creepy exorcism through to her complex relationship with Malcolm we truly rooted for her all season. We hope that season 2 brings another storyline that can showcase Green’s acting prowess.
5. More Dorian Gray (Reeve Carney). Dorian is a great character and aside from sleeping with most of the characters – Brona, Vanessa and Ethan – he didn’t actually do much else did he? We want to explore the connection he has with Vanessa more and draw him into the central group taking an active role in the main storyline for season 2.
6. Plenty of scares. There were a few moments in the first season that were truly frightening e.g. Vanessa’s possession, the vampire attacks in episode 1 but these proved to be few and far between. We’re not saying we want the show to be all action by any means but more edge-of-the-seat stuff wouldn’t go amiss would it?
7. Caliban (Rory Kinnear) and Victor (Harry Treadaway) to rebuild their relationship. In the first season the two characters butted heads as Victor abandoned his creation. Caliban’s shocking (body-ripping) return saw him demand that his maker find him a companion which it looks like he has with Brona. Can the two work on their fractured relationship in season 2? We hope so.
8. Brona to lose the Irish accent. This one pains us to say as we love Billie Piper but that Irish accent wasn’t good. It made it hard to understand what she was even saying at points. If, as we predict, she comes back as the Bride of Frankenstein we’d be happy to forget she was Irish and just enjoy watching Billie acting her socks off as she’s a cracking actress.
9. Darker stories. To say that the how is named after the popular 19th century fiction publications that focused on sensational storylines we didn’t feel the show fully embraced its inspiration. The tone could be a lot darker and we hope that the writers take the show in a darker direction in the next season. This could be one truly horrifying show with the right stories.
10. A better pace. At points Penny Dreadful was magnificent but at others it was dare we say a bit dull? We don’t require all of our TV shows to have a pace like Scandal but Penny Dreadful really was all over the place in terms of progression. A better pace would make the show more consistent with a better flow in terms of story-telling.
Penny Dreadful will return in the US and the UK for a second season in 2015.
