Showtime's Penny Dreadful Will Possess You With This New Teaser

I’m a huge fan of horror TV shows, and I’m an equally huge fan of TV teasers that evoke excitement and anticipation for an upcoming product. (I know most of you are different and like really boring teasers, right?) And so it is with a raised eyebrow and downward turned mouth edges that I viewed the above teaser for Showtime’s upcoming monster mash-up Penny Dreadful, which looks to take over the genre void left by Dexter’s glorious absence. That said, I’m not particularly excited or anticipatory of what I see here.

From what we know about Penny Dreadful, which admittedly isn’t much, literary beasts such as Dracula and Dorian Gray are running amok in London at the end of the 19th century. But there hasn’t been any sign that either religion or satanic forces would come into play. Yet in the teaser above, we see Eva Green’s character Vanessa Ives praying in front of a crucifix on the wall – plus candles, since you can’t pray without candles – until she is apparently taken over by a most unholy spirit, as depicted by entirely white eyeballs and the on-the-nose quote, “We all have our demons.”

I’m up to my own eyeballs with horrors revolving around possessions and demonic forces, as cinemas have gotten bogged down in recent years with mid-to-no-budget exorcism horrors. Last year’s American Horror Story: Asylum seemingly took on every taboo the sub-genre had to offer, so I wonder why Penny Dreadful’s creators decided to go this route as well, especially when they have a rogue’s gallery of villains to attend to already. And that’s without mentioning FX’s upcoming exorcism drama from Eli Roth, or Cinemax’s upcoming exorcism thriller from The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman.

Of course, there’s also a Dracula series on the air as well, so I don’t know why I was expecting Showtime to make something original happen elsewhere. With a cast that includes Josh Hartnett, Billie Piper, Timothy Dalton, Rory Kinnear, Harry Treadaway, Reeve Carney and Helen McCrory, Penny Dreadful will make its debut at some point in 2014. The first clip below should have you in (Frankenstein’s creature’s) stitches, and check out the first video production diary below, which delves into the background of the premise.

Nick Venable
Assistant Managing Editor

Nick is a Cajun Country native and an Assistant Managing Editor with a focus on TV and features. His humble origin story with CinemaBlend began all the way back in the pre-streaming era, circa 2009, as a freelancing DVD reviewer and TV recapper.  Nick leapfrogged over to the small screen to cover more and more television news and interviews, eventually taking over the section for the current era and covering topics like Yellowstone, The Walking Dead and horror. Born in Louisiana and currently living in Texas — Who Dat Nation over America’s Team all day, all night — Nick spent several years in the hospitality industry, and also worked as a 911 operator. If you ever happened to hear his music or read his comics/short stories, you have his sympathy.