Penny Dreadful: City of Angels (Stan)
While it bears little similarity to the previous Penny Dreadful series, which blended familiar characters from Gothic fiction with the serial style of the original penny dreadfuls (cheap popular stories produced in the UK in the 19th century), John Logan’s Penny Dreadful: City of Angels is fast becoming addictive viewing for ArtsHub’s performing arts editor Richard Watts. ‘Imagine James Ellroy’s LA Quartet (The Black Dahlia, LA Confidential, etc) but with a supernatural twist and you have something of a sense of this new series, which is set in 1930s Los Angeles,’ Watts said. ‘Featuring everything from demonic figures and and spirits from Mexican-American folklore, alongside racial tensions, Nazi conspirators, religious fundamentalism and a blustering demagogue’s rise to power, it’s a heady and fascinating mix of story elements. I’m only a couple of episodes in so far, but I’m fascinated to see how the story unfolds.’
