Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Penny Dreadful: City Of Angels’ On Showtime, A Sequel Set In 1938 Los Angeles

Penny Dreadful creator John Logan is at the helm of the sequel series Penny Dreadful: City Of Angels (Sam Mendes is also back as an executive producer), and if you think you needed to watch the first series in order to understand the sequel, there’s no need to worry. This is a new story with new characters, even new demons. Rory Kinnear is the only holdover from the original we can discern, and he’s playing a completely different role here. So, while the spirit (pun intended) of the series may be in those “penny dreadful” novellas the first series is based on, this is completely different.

PENNY DREADFUL: CITY OF ANGELS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A shot of what looks like a solar eclipse. “There will come a time when the world is ready for me,” a woman’s voice intones. When nation will battle nation, when race will devour race. When brother will kill brother, until not a soul is left. Are you ready?”

The Gist: We see a field of migrant workers, and a kid playing records on a phonograph that’s perched on the top of a car. Next to the field, there’s an existential argument between spirit sisters. Magda (Natalie Dormer), a demon bent on destruction, tells men they can have their wildest dreams by just whispering to them. “All mankind needs to be the monster he truly is is being told he can,” she says to Santa Muerte (Lorena Izzo), who just wants the boy playing the records. Reluctantly, Magda agrees, but vows there will be a lot of bodies to collect. She sets fire to the field, killing almost everyone in it, including the boy’s father. As the boy runs to his father, Santa Muerte touches his shoulder and knocks him down, leaving a mark.

We cut to 1938 Los Angeles. That boy, Tiago Vega (Daniel Zovatto) has just been promoted to an LAPD detective, the first Chicano to have that job. His mother Maria (Adriana Barraza) has been raising her four kids — Tiago, older brother Raul (Adam Rodriguez), younger brother Mateo (Johnathan Nieves) and younger sister Josefina (Jessica Garza) all alone since their father died. Their neighborhood is being threatened by a highway development, spearheaded by councilman Charlton Townsend (Michael Gladis), who has ignored the pleas of the Mexican population that the construction will destroy their community.

Tiago is called on a Sunday by his new partner, Det. Lewis Michener (Nathan Lane), the day before he’s supposed to start as a detective, to investigate a bizarre murder case; the bodies of four teens from Beverly Hills are found naked on the concrete viaduct known as the L.A. River, their hearts cut out and their faces painted to look like Day of the Dead masks. The phrase, “You take our heart, we take yours,” is scrawled in blood in Spanish. “Well, we know why they called us,” Michener said. “It’s a spic thing.” Their boss, Captain Ned Vanderhoff (Brent Spiner) is afraid there will be a race war on their hands if they don’t find who did this soon.

Despite that slur, Michener was the only one who wanted Tiago as a partner; most of the LAPD doesn’t think a Mexican deserves to be a detective. Even Tiago’s brother Raul isn’t sure, but for a different reason: He thinks that Tiago is taking sides with the oppressive, mostly white city government and not his own family. He leads a near-riot at the Transportation Committee meeting where Townsend informs them that their injunction to stop construction was denied. “Where are we supposed to go?” he asks Townsend. “‘Where you came from’ is not a bad answer,” the smug councilman tells Raul, who was born in L.A.

Maria works as a housekeeper for the Craft family: Dr. Peter Craft (Rory Kinnear) is a pediatrician who is kind and asks about Maria’s family, but he’s also a member of the Nazi-supporting German-American Bund, who goes to a public park to convince people that America should stay out of the burgeoning conflict in Europe. Dr. Craft’s wife Linda (Piper Perabo) is a detached mother to their two boys and a heavy drinker. During his work day, he’s visited by a mother named Elsa (Dormer) who brings her asthmatic son. When she gets him alone, she talks of her abusive husband and almost gets Craft to kiss her. Then, when she absorbs the boy into her body in the elevator we realize it’s Magda in disguise.

Townsend has a meeting, set up by his assistant Annie (Dormer again) with a possible architect that wants to bid on more highway projects, Richard Goss (Thomas Kretschmann), who is loyal to Hitler. He threatens Townsend to accept his proposal.

After Maria prays to Santa Muerte after Tiago tells her about the murders, she knows something bad is going to happen, especially if Muerte’s “bitch sister” gets involved. Indeed, the next day Raul leads a riot against the LAPD as they try to enforce the order to start construction. The melee starts when Magda whispers into a nervous cop’s ear, who lets off the first shot. She also whispers into Raul’s ear, who comes very close to killing Michener, until Tiago intervenes.

Our Take: The first episode manages to take the complex threads that it presents and weaves them into one story, bound together by Dormer’s Magda, who shifts identities in order to tempt various players in this story to turn into the monsters they’re meant to be. It’s exactly as she told Santa Muerta in that field 20 years prior. She’s trying to ignite a race war on more than one front, with Mexicans facing off against racist police and uncaring developers, and the Nazis trying to infiltrate their way into city government.

There are fine performances all around, highlighted by Dormer’s shape-shifting performance, Rodriguez as the steadfast Raul, and Lane as Michener, who seems to be investigating the Nazi infiltration on the side. Director Paco Cabezas’ visuals in episode 1 communicate the scope and sweep of this series, even in its dark scenes. A scene where Tiago dances with his mother in front of the record store where Mateo works shows the liveliness of the neighborhood that’s about to be destroyed.

What it feels like Logan has accomplished here is telling this tale of good and evil, of the two demons competing with each other, and of a burgeoning race war in a way that’s both engaging and vibrant, at least in its own super-serious way. Sometimes the original series was so visually dreary it obscured the story it was trying to tell. We don’t have that here.

Sex and Skin: Nothing besides Mateo chasing away a grown man feeling up his teenage sister.

Parting Shot: We see the riot in slow motion. Tiago stands over his unconscious brother, not sure if he’s dead or not. Magda and Santa Muerto slowly walk toward each other.

Sleeper Star: We know Kerry Bishé will be showing up as a radio host, so that’ll be fun. But we almost didn’t recognize Piper Perabo as Croft’s alcoholic wife. We hope to see more of her going forward.

Most Pilot-y Line: The casual racism is always hard to swallow, but it’s understandable given the time period of when the show takes place. But the line where Townsend compares himself to Mussolini and (gasp) Hitler is a bit on the nose.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Penny Dreadful: City Of Angels tells a compelling story filled with fine performances. We would have just watched to see Natalie Dormer play multiple roles, but the rest of the first episode was fascinating, as well.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream Penny Dreadful: City Of Angels On SHO.com