Penny Dreadful is a horror drama television series (2014-2016). The title refers to the penny dreadfuls, a type of 19th-century British fiction publication with lurid and sensational subject matter. The series draws upon many public domain characters from 19th-century Victorian Gothic fiction, including Dorian Gray from Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray; Mina Harker, Abraham Van Helsing, John Seward, Renfield, and Count Dracula from Bram Stoker’s Dracula; Victor Frankenstein and his monster from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; and Henry Jekyll from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, showing their origin stories as an explorer searches for his daughter. Justine from Justine, or The Misfortunes of Virtue by the Marquis de Sade also appears. A spin-off series, Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, aired from April 26 to June 28, 2020.
Main cast
1) Reeve Carney as Dorian Gray, a charismatic man who is ageless and immortal.
2) Timothy Dalton as Malcolm Murray, a hardened explorer of the African continent, on a deeply personal quest to save the remaining members of his family.
3) Eva Green as Vanessa Ives, an enigmatic, quietly driven heroine who proves herself a force to be reckoned with as she battles powerful, relentless forces from the underworld.
4) Rory Kinnear as the Creature, a creation Frankenstein abruptly abandoned, who, not given a name, variously uses the aliases Caliban and John Clare.
5) Billie Piper as Brona Croft / Lily Frankenstein, an Irish immigrant seeking to escape her brutal, violent past.
6) Danny Sapani as Sembene, a mysterious, long-time ally of Malcolm (seasons 1–2).
7) Harry Treadaway as Victor Frankenstein, an arrogant, socially inept young doctor whose ambition and research involve transcending the barrier between life and death.
8)Josh Hartnett as Ethan Chandler (born Ethan Lawrence Talbot), a charming, brash and daring American man of action with uncanny marksmanship, who detests violence, and is more complicated than he likes to admit.
9) Helen McCrory as Evelyn Poole (aka Evelyn Paul), a professional spiritualist known by the alias Madame Kali who is secretly the leader of a powerful coven of witches called “Nightcomers” (season 2, recurring season 1).
10) Simon Russell Beale as Ferdinand Lyle, an eccentric Egyptologist (season 2, recurring seasons 1 and 3).
11) Patti LuPone as Florence Seward, an alienist or early psychotherapist treating Vanessa’s depression (season 3; LuPone previously guest-starred as Joan Clayton in season 2)
12) Wes Studi as Kaetenay, an Apache with a connection to Ethan, who becomes an ally to Malcolm (season 3).