Showtime’s Penny Dreadful is a horror drama TV series created by John Logan.
The series takes place in the late 19th century and includes many literary characters like Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray), Mina Harker, Abraham Van Helsing, Dr. Seward, Renfield and Count Dracula (Bram Stoker’s Dracula), Dr. Victor Frankenstein and his monster (Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein), and Dr. Henry Jekyll (Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde).
The main cast consists of Timothy Dalton (The Living Daylights, Licence to Kill), Eva Green (The Dreamers, Casino Royale), Josh Hartnett (Black Hawk Down, Lucky Number Slevin), Billie Piper (Doctor Who, Secret Diary of a Call Girl), Reeve Carney (House of Gucci), Harry Treadaway (Control), and Rory Kinnear (Skyfall, The Imitation Game).
Behind the camera, next to the creator John Logan (Gladiator, The Last Samurai, The Aviator, and Skyfall), there is Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Revolutionary Road, and Skyfall) and four directors: J.A. Bayona (The Impossible, The Orphanage), Coky Giedroyc, James Hawes, and Dearbhla Walsh.
You’re moving through the tall grass, getting a glimpse of the prey, the shoulders mostly, the mane. You prepare your rifle. You’re very quiet. And then there’s a moment. The wind changes, the grass stops swaying. The lion turns, looks at you. The moment you realize you are no longer the hunter, you are the prey.Sir Malcolm Murray, S1.Ep1: Night Work
We’ll carry on with this fight. We can lose every battle, except the last.Sir Malcolm Murray, S1.Ep4: Demimonde
There is only one worthy goal for scientific exploration. Piercing the tissue that separates life from death.Victor Frankenstein, S1.Ep1: Night Work
The ancient egyptian religions were unique in a way. They had a singular goal. Not transmutation to an afterlife, but something even more profound, eternal life. Victor Frankenstein, S1.Ep2: Séance
Man does not live only in the empirical world. We must seek the ephemeral or why live?Victor Frankenstein, S1.Ep2: Séance
You seek to threaten me with death? If you seek to threaten me, threaten me with life.Victor Frankenstein, S1.Ep3: Resurrection
You have to give them names or they’ll never come to life.Vanessa Ives, S1.Ep5: Closer Than Sisters
Your father loves you very much and would do anything to save you. But I love you in a different way. I love you enough to kill you.Vanessa Ives, S1.Ep5: Closer Than Sisters
There are things within us all that can never be unleashed.Vanessa Ives, S1.Ep6: What Death Can Join Together
There is a place where the malformed find grace, where the hideous can be beautiful, where strangeness is not shunned but celebrated. This place is the theater.Vincent Brand, S1.Ep3: Resurrection
There are things you can’t control. There are battles you lose. At the end of the day, the only thing we have is the people we trust.Ethan Chandler, S1.Ep6: What Death Can Join Together
Photographs are so ironically impermanent. They capture one moment in time to perfection. A painting can capture eternity.Dorian Gray, S1.Ep6: What Death Can Join Together
To be different. To be powerful. Is that not a divine gift?Dorian Gray, S1.Ep6: What Death Can Join Together
You can’t change what you are, no matter who you save, or who you love.Ethan Chandler, S2.Ep1: Fresh Hell
I love storms. Primordial. Every bit of civilization gone. Everything true coming out.Vanessa Ives, S2.Ep7: Little Scorpion
You don’t need to remind me of my sins. Just never forget your own.The Creature, S2.Ep2: Verbis Diablo
The glory of life surmounts the fear of death. Good Christians fear hellfire, so to avoid it, they are kind to their fellow man. Good pagans do not have this fear, so they can be who they are, good or ill, as their nature dictates. We have no fear of God, so we are accountable to no one but each other.The Creature, S2.Ep2: Verbis Diablo
True evil is, above all things, seductive. When the Devil knocks at your door, he doesn’t have cloven hooves. He is beautiful, and offers you your heart’s desire in whispered airs. Like a siren, beckoning you to ruinous shore.The Creature, S2.Ep9: And Hell Itself My Only Foe
When you have seen that of which you are capable, when you have stood in blood long enough, what is there left but to wade to a desolate shore, away from all others?The Creature, S2.Ep10: And They Were Enemies
We’re all neophytes in love. None of us have the tools, or the weapons, or the resources. Prepared as we think we are, we’re defeated.Sir Malcolm Murray, S2.Ep8: Memento Mori
Mischief is best enacted in small groups at very close quarters.Ferdinand Lyle, S2.Ep2: Verbis Diablo
Never underestimate the power of a queen with lovely hair, my dear.Ferdinand Lyle, S2.Ep10: And They Were Enemies
Leave everything you were outside this door. Everything you are, bring with you.Joan Clayton, S2.Ep3: The Nightcomers
You must never speak the Devil’s language idly. Let this language not become easy in your mouth or soon it will no longer be your mouth but his.Joan Clayton, S2.Ep3: The Nightcomers
Why people in this world hate what is not them. Why they fear all they don’t know. Why they hate themselves most of all. For being weak. For being old. For being everything altogether that is not God-like.Joan Clayton, S2.Ep3: The Nightcomers
When Lucifer fell, he did not fall alone. They will hunt you until the end of days. Be true.Joan Clayton, S2.Ep3: The Nightcomers
Anyone who’s kind to the suffering deserves a proper place in the museum.Lavinia Putney, S2.Ep4: Evil Spirits in Heavenly Places
Don’t we all want to paint ourselves into something better than we are?Dorian Gray, S2.Ep8: Memento Mori
What is love but a kind of creature waiting to be unbound? A malady. What does it bring any of us but… confusion and bedevilment?Victor Frankenstein, S2.Ep7: Little Scorpion
When men become mad, they quite lose their dignity.Evelyn Poole, S2.Ep9: And Hell Itself My Only Foe
We are all two things in a way, are we not? Deep in the marrow. Angel and Devil. Light and dark. The pull between the two is the active verb which energizes our lives.Henry Jekyll, S3.Ep2: Predators Far and Near
In the end, we must be that thing the world demands of us. We must take the lust and the avarice and the ambition and bury them. All the alien, ugly things! All the things we really are!Henry Jekyll, S3.Ep3: Good and Evil Braided Be
The angel seeks the light, the beast seeks the dark.Victor Frankenstein, S3.Ep2: Predators Far and Near
If you cannot endure the nightmare, you should not lie down for the sleep.Victor Frankenstein, S3.Ep3: Good and Evil Braided Be
We need not live on the fulcrum. We can be angel or beast fully.Victor Frankenstein, S3.Ep3: Good and Evil Braided Be
After all, it is our memories which make us monsters.Victor Frankenstein, S3.Ep5: This World Is Our Hell
Hunting a man is no great thing. They are slow and predictable. They can be found always where their appetites lead them. To eat, to sleep, to f***. Man is no great thing.Kaetenay, S3.Ep2: Predators Far and Near
How do you accomplish anything in this life? By craft. By stealth. By poison. By the throat quietly slit in the dead of the night. By the careful and silent accumulation of power.Lily, S3.Ep3: Good and Evil Braided Be
Liberty is a b**ch who must be bedded on a mattress of corpses.Lily, S3.Ep3: Good and Evil Braided Be
There are some wounds that can never heal. There are scars that make us who we are. But without them, we don’t exist.Lily, S3.Ep8: Perpetual Night
When there are bodies stretched from here to the horizon, and you can walk across them without touching the ground, then you can weep.Hecate Poole, S3.Ep3: Good and Evil Braided Be
There is only one way to free yourself of guilt. Embrace your sins.Hecate Poole, S3.Ep5: This World Is Our Hell
Give me your flesh. Give me your blood. Be my bride. And then all light will end and the world will live in darkness. The very air will be pestilence to mankind. And then our brethren, the Night Creatures, will emerge and feed. Such is our power, such is our kingdom, such is my kiss.Dracula, S3.Ep4: A Blade of Grass
There’s one monster who loves you for who you really are. And here he stands. I don’t want to make you good, I don’t want you to be normal. I don’t need you to be anything but who you truly are.Dracula, S3.Ep7: Ebb Tide
You will never be alone again. I will love you till time has lost all meaning.Dracula, S3.Ep7: Ebb Tide
There is only one defense against isolation. Be with those you love.Catriona Hartdegen, S3.Ep6: No Beast So Fierce
You may as well read the Bible for its history which, it goes without saying, is a fool’s errand fit only for idiot children.Catriona Hartdegen, S3.Ep7: Ebb Tide
No matter the language, the drama always ends the same way. The curtain falls on a stage bedecked with bodies and there is nothing but silence. And death holds all dominion.Catriona Hartdegen, S3.Ep7: Ebb Tide
I am nothing. I am no more than a blade of grass. But I am. You think you know evil? Here it stands.Vanessa Ives, S3.Ep4: A Blade of Grass
Fear not old prophecies. We defy them. We make our own heaven and our own hell.Vanessa Ives, S3.Ep9: The Blessed Dark
You think you’re bold? You think you know sin? You’re still learning the language, I wrote the bloody book.Dorian Gray, S3.Ep7: Ebb Tide
Passion will undo the best of us and lead only to tragedy. It’s ever thus for those who care so deeply.Dorian Gray, S3.Ep9: The Blessed Dark
Do you not yet comprehend the wicked secret of the immortal? All age and die, save you. All rot and fall to dust, save you. Any child you bear becomes a crone and perishes before your eyes. Any lover withers and shrinks into incontinence and bent, toothless senility. While you, only you, never age. Never tire. Never fade. Alone. But after a time you’ll lose the desire for passion entirely, for connection with anyone. Like a muscle that atrophies from lack of use. And one day you’ll realize you’ve become like them. Beautiful and dead. You have become a perfect, unchanging portrait of yourself.Dorian Gray, S3.Ep9: The Blessed Dark
The pansy at my feet doth the same tale repeat. Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?The Creature, S3.Ep9: The Blessed Dark
P.S. If you liked this blog post, don’t forget to share it.