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 |   Reflections and ruminations from a modern day Alice - Life is Wonderland |
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Reflections and ruminations from a modern day Alice - Life is Wonderland  Welcome to the place were I chronicle my own falls down dark holes and adventures chasing white rabbits! Come on In, Take a Bite, You Never Know What You May Find... "Curiouser and curiouser." Alice in Wonderland    |
| I don't watch much television that isn't accessible at odd hours via Netflicks. I've never been able to follow a show, wait for the new episode each week and watch it at it's designated airing time. This limits my television knowledge considerably. I do enjoy the escape of binge watching something darkly entertaining in the wee hours of an insomniacal night on occasion. The last bout of binging had me running through the series Penny Dreadful, which I think was originally a showtime series but conveniently the entire series run was available on Netflicks. It was a beautifully crafted show, lush and opulent and unapologetically Gothic. It took a run at classic horror and cast regulars included witches, werewolves and vampires. There was a particularly compelling theme regarding the flawed and fabulous Dr. Frankenstein and his equally engaging "monster". The writing was excellent, the characters so wonderfully fleshed out that their back stories were fascinating, even the ones well known already. The series centered around a main character, Vanessa, played exceptionally well by Eva Green. She is a devote woman with a compromised soul connected by a thread to an age-old evil. She wages a war both with the creatures of darkness and within herself. She is instantly engaging and her torment is the foundation for a series that series spins through blood-soaked conflicts, ill-fated love affairs, and brilliant subplots that arch across several episodes before some epic battle or conclusion. There is dread, there is tragedy but there is also love and, sometimes incomprehensibly, hope. This was a series about the monsters and legends you know but delivers the backstories and insights you have missed in an stunning and often visceral way. Not a fan of slasher-level blood and gusts, even the brutality and gore are so artfully crafted that I could forgive some of the series more over the top moments like when the Frankenstein monster reveal comes at the expense of a minor character's shocking demise. This is a a particularly brutal death scene that you never suspect is coming and your shock is clearly matched by the good doctor's own. Moments like this are not uncommon and you get the feeling early on that even the show's most key characters may not be entirely safe from one episode to the next. Ultimately, Penny Dreadful rings true to the origins of it's name, the 19th century British booklets that were circulated around, containing sensationalized and often scandalous fiction featuring sex and horror. The television series delivers plenty of both, in a decadent and indulgent fashion. In short, I found it fresh and remarkably well done. The acting is first rate, the costumes and stage designs are incredible. Victorian age London is recreated with amazing detail from the lavish homes and city streets to the back alleys and subterranean tunnels. The show was cancelled after the third season finale, the show's creature having felt that Vanessa's story had been fully expressed and concluded. It was an ambitious series that seemed to spare no expense one set design and special effects. It had to be very expensive to produce. At the end I agreed and felt satisfied that Vanessa's story had been told. I appreciated the writers also attempting to leave us in a good place after keeping us so often mired in darkness and tragedy. |
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