Posted in: HBO, Showtime, TV | Tagged: eva green, HBO, laura donnelly, penny dreadful, showtime, the nevers

A Look at The Nevers & Its Unexpected Parallels to Penny Dreadful

The Nevers is a hit for HBO, and with its 6^th episode, the secrets of Amalia True, its mysterious and flawed heroine are revealed at last, setting the stage for the rest of the series. The show has racked up over 1.4 million viewers per week, which are close to Game of Thrones numbers, which probably guarantees a renewal. What's interesting is the series' unexpected parallels to Penny Dreadful, which had a 3-season run on Showtime and Sky One.

Both The Nevers and Penny Dreadful are set in Victorian England, an alternate Steampunk-y version of Victorian England. Both are lifted from other writers' works – The Nevers lifts from the manga and anime Tokyo ESP, Penny Dreadful lifts from Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Both feature feminist themes about how badly women are treated in an unfair patriarchal society (although virtually all premium cable dramas have themes about how badly women are treated in a patriarchal society, from The Sopranos to The Wire to Big  Little Lies to Nurse Jackie to Game of Thrones to The Borgias to P-Valley and… you get the picture). That seems to be the most prominent theme of cable TV dramas, more than network TV series.

Both The Nevers and Penny Dreadful feature performances by a lead actress that are intense, unique, and surprising. Laura Donnelly and Eva Green are classically-trained theatrical actors who played a deeply flawed heroine on their respective shows that take them into territories few actors get to explore. Eva Green plays Vanessa Ives on Penny Dreadful, the doomed spiritualist, witch, and psychic with an agonized relationship with God as she's in danger of being possessed by the Devil. The scenes of Green in the throes of demonic possession, of channeling spirits and talking in tongues as she fought back the supernatural are genuinely terrifying. Laura Donnelly plays Amalia True and two other women: the original Molly and the Stripe, a battle-torn soldier from the future. As Molly, she's open, shy, and sad. As True, she channels the voice and body language of the character's original hardened soldier played by Claudia Black, then the prim, cut-glass Amalia True, the new persona crafted for her to function in the Victorian Era. Both Green and Donnelly's performances were far beyond what's normally expected on TV. The industry didn't know what to do with Green after Penny Dreadful ended, and she's been starring in European arthouse movies and indie Science Fiction movies ever since. We get the feeling the industry may not know what to do with Donnelly after The Nevers as well, since she doesn't fit into any neat mainstream categories either. In the meantime, we have these performances on permanent record as the peak of two acting careers so far.

The Nevers has more coherent and consistent writing than Penny Dreadful and higher ratings, so it might last longer than the latter. Both shows have rumoured turmoil behind the scenes. Joss Whedon left The Nevers under the cloud of recent allegations of abusive behaviour on other projects, so new showrunner Philippa Goslett will be shaping the show to however she sees fit. Penny Dreadful's 3^rd and final season was strangely written, seeming to set up new characters and plotlines for the 4^th season and then ending with the badly-written death of Eva Green's character. Showrunner and creator John Logan then claimed he planned to end the show all along. Hopefully, The Nevers' ending, which it comes, won't be as abrupt and broken as Penny Dreadful's cancellation. The Nevers is now on HBO and streaming on HBO Max. Penny Dreadful is now on Netflix.

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