CITY OF ANGELS
Giving you the LA confidential on the Penny Dreadful spin-off.
UK Sky Atalantic, Wednesdays
US Showtime, finished
Showrunner John Logan
Cast Natalie Dormer, Adriana Barraza,
Daniel Zovatto, Rory Kinnear
“We are Pachuco. We are Chicano. We are Aztec. We are spade. We are wop. We are dago. We are chink. We are queer. We are everything they fear. And we go out dancing.” And believe us, there is a lot of dancing in Penny Dreadful: City Of Angels, a show that feels more like The Terror meets West Side Story than a follow-up to the original series’ Gothic horror monster mash.
We’re in 1938 Los Angeles, a racial melting pot that’s teetering on an experiment in social engineering. With the city expanding, opportunists in influential positions see new transport developments as a way of shepherding racial groups into contained slums. In addition, the Nazis are in the city trying to drum up support. Amazingly, much of this is based on historical fact.
It’s a potentially explosive situation that a mischievous Mexican deity, Magda (Natalie
Dormer), sister to the goddess of death Santa Muerte, seeks to exploit and turn into an apocalyptic war by assuming a number of alter-egos who guide events towards meltdown. In the midst of all this, Tiago Vega (Daniel Zovatto), the LAPD’s first Mexican-American detective, tries to solve a racially sensitive murder with the help of his gruff old Jewish partner, while his family disintegrates around him.
Sounds deadly earnest. But the show is unapologetically stylised – a mix of Greek tragedy and Hollywood Golden Era heightened
reality. Profanities aside, a lot of the dialogue has a rhythm you’d expect from James Dean or Bette Davis. There are vibrant, elaborate dance routines and eruptions of violence that the makers clearly don’t care look choreographed. This leads to some breathtaking moments of visual poetry, gut-wrenching plot twists and powerful performances.
But despite its lofty aims, the series does stumble. Too many plotlines leave too many characters underdeveloped. The bouts of polemic – which often draw parallels with Trump’s policies – are frequently clumsy and unsubtle. Magda’s motives and aims are annoyingly vague. Most frustrating is how little connection it has to Penny Dreadful. You also can’t help thinking that it might have been a better show with no supernatural elements, so easily could they be cut. But then you’d miss out on Dormer’s amazing range of OTT accents. Dave Golder
The show was partly inspired by John Logan’s obsessive browsing of historical maps of LA at Los Angeles Public Library.