Original Penny Dreadful show won’t connect to City of Angels

Last week, Showtime announced the premiere date for Penny Dreadful: City of Angels: Sunday, April 26. The show — which takes place in Los Angeles in 1938 and stars Game of Thrones actress Natalie Dormer (Margaery Tyrell) as a shape-shifting demon named Magda — is being billed as the “spiritual descendant” to the original Penny Dreadful, which was set in late 19th century Victorian England and starred Eva Green.

Speaking at the Television Critics Association winter press tour, creator John Logan said the story from the original series is done. City of Angels is a whole new thing with no spillover. “As fond as I am about that series, that was a complete novel. It closed at the end, appropriately with that story, that poetic sad story we were telling,” he said.

This new show kicks off with Detective Tiago Vega (Daniel Zovatto) and his partner Lewis Michener (Nathan Lane) investigating a grisly murder, getting swept up in a tale that intersects with Los Angeles history, Mexican-American folklore, Nazism and the rise of radio evangelism.

But while the show is set in the past, it’s very much about the present. During his presentation, Logan displayed two maps of Los Angeles County, one from 1938 and the other from 2020. Side by side, it was clear that the major difference was the addition of highways. “What strikes me is the free exchange of ideas, information, and culture,” Logan said. “The first thing you note is the freeways. What began as a civil engineering project, turned into sort of a de-facto social engineering. We no longer have Sugar Hill or Bunker Hill or Sonoratown. We created quarantine zones. This pattern that began in Los Angeles was replicated across the country.”

"If you live at Cesar Chavez avenue, and you were to walk to Los Angeles County General hospital, less than a half-mile away, you’d have to cross 41 lanes of freeway. I found that to be a compelling story to tell, and that’s where it came from."

Dormer talked about working with Logan on the show and how the problems being dealt with in 1938 translate to today. “What John (Logan) is dealing thematically with this show, as he says, it’s set in 1938, but it’s about 2020.”

"It’s about the dangers of demagoguery, it’s about the demonization of the other, it’s about nationalist fervor, it’s about people being terrified, it’s about new transportation, new technologies, the constant threat of war, it’s about people being at this moment in history and not being able to see what the next ten years is going to be and they’re terrified. And that’s why 1938, right bang smack a year before the second World War, is relevant for everything that is happening right now. It’s, like, now I’m scared. Let’s all be grateful that Iran isn’t throwing bombs at us right now."

If some of those talking points set off alarm bells, yes, one of the cast members has said that Logan was partially inspired to write this new story thanks to thoughts he had following the election of Donald Trump to the presidency. We’ll see how that plays out.

The show has a big cast. Joining Dormer, Lane, and Zovatto are Kerry Bishé, Rory Kinnear, Adriana Barraza, Michael Gladis, Jessica Garza, and Johnathan Nieves, Lorenza Izzo, Adam Rodriguez, Amy Madigan, Brent Spiner, Lin Shaye, Thomas Kretschmann, Dominic Sherwood and Ethan Peck. We’ll be watching when City of Angels descends onto our TVs in April.

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h/t Deadline