Eva Green is outstanding and mesmerizing. I wish this Penny Dreadful didn't have to end. Stellar performances, cinematography and design. Of course who doesn't love Josh Harnett? And hello Patti LuPone!!! Also, the casting and personalities were tremendous!

I'm not a fantasy/fairytale fan or whatever, but Penny Dreadful is by far my most favorite tv show ever, along with Peaky Blinders (different genre, I know). You just can't imagine how good the acting is, the cinematography, the insane plot twists,... I often had to pauze the episodes because I had a big 'O M G' moment. I even had to cry sometimes. If you're doubting to watch the show: please do watch it. (I even wish I could unsee it, just so I could see it 'for the first time' over and over again.)

Dangnamit, just when I thought the horror genre is beaten to death by the travesty of women and their hybristophilic, romanticized perversion with the ghastly, Showtime proved to me that there is still hope for good old- fashion Horror; and with style. The title is a cleverly taken from a pejorative of 19th century serialized sensational Victorian fiction (that incidentally, helped to literate poor working class youths).The show itself, is a great amalgamation of most of the classic horror figures. That much I can say and the rest I will leave it up to you. The acting, story, direction, production are all top notched and highly commendable. I am glad that Timothy Dalton is casted, and been casted well, so is Eva green and surprisingly Josh Hartnett too. The beat lines though, must be from Rory Kinnear's portrayal of Frankenstein's monster; at once vicious and vulnerable, a poet and a savage. I recommend this gem rather than all the other mediocre garbage out there.

I watched this series on the recommendation of a friend of mine. It had three seasons and a decent beginning, middle and end, which is always commendable. The first season was very good, the plot was an adaptation of the novel "Dracula", with several characters from famous novels (Frankenstein, Dorian Gray etc.) involved in the search for a girl kidnapped by a vampire, which I presumed to be Dracula despite his name will never be mentioned. Dracula has already been taken to the movies or television for dozens of times, so the subject is far from new, but the way it was treated is undoubtedly different. The focus has always been on human characters and their stories, not only on vampires. The plot is complex but not enough for us to get lost in it. Everything gets denser in the second season, which is much more original than the first, with Vanessa, the central character in all the series, being chased by demonic witches who believe she must be the mother of the Antichrist. Its a more intense, stronger story, more capable of surprising and it was an excellent evolution. The third season, for me, was the weakest ... the return to the vampires was a mistake, the introduction to the plot took a lot of time and almost everything happens in four or five episodes. Even so, it gives a coherent end to the series. I enjoyed the way it all ends, but I already anticipated the final and this took the impact it should have had.Concerning the cast, it has a lot of heavy names. Timothy Dalton is a great actor and did an excellent job, very consistent from beginning to end; Eva Green started slowly and sometimes seemed a little cliché, but improved a lot from the middle of the first season and made a growing performance from that moment on; Harry Treadaway was excellent as Dr. Frankenstein, he knew how to give his character idealism and naivete, as a dreamer who did everything the wrong way and ended up disillusioned with the world. Josh Hartnett is very somber as Mr. Chandler, he does a brilliant job, full of strong and rich psychological notes. Rory Kinnear is also of enormous psychological depth, and his role is especially rich because he humanizes over time, in a remarkable transformation. Simon Russell Beale begins very bad, seeming annoying and histrionic, but this will give way to a more contained and dramatic performance. Billie Piper has a weak performance in the first season, but he improves considerably in the second season. Wes Studi and Perdita Weeks only appears in the third season but they do it very well, such as Samuel Barnett and Shazad Latif. Patti LuPone did two seasons, but she did also two distinct characters with great dignity. On the negative side, Christian Camargo was far from being a convincing Dracula, Helen McCrory was a casting error because she never adapted well to her character, Sarah Greene acted well, but her character must have died at the end of the second season, Reeve Carney did a satisfying job, but her character turned out to be much more secondary than it should have been at first glance. So, as you can see, the cast is strong and good, but if there were mistakes, in most cases, they result from failures in the construction and planning of the characters.The series is loaded with strong scenes, gore with blood gushing, babies being slaughtered, human organs gutted or dismembered. Sex scenes are rarer, but when they happen they're strong, and may shock because they can involve blood or gore in some way. Therefore, this series is far from recommendable for sensitive people or a weak stomach. CGI is good and works well, with decadent Victorian London of the post-industrial period appearing in glory, magnificent, full of smoke, factories, dirt, and rot. Overall, sets are in line with the period, as the costumes, with the exception of Perdita Weeks (third season) clothing, which is "too XXI century" to be acceptable here... it's cool and Gothic but it doesn't look historically accurate. Cinematography was also very good, with a gray, dark and decadent look.