What’s Worth Watching: A Penny for Your Nightmares

Penny Dreadful, “Fresh Hell” (Sunday, May 3, 10/9c, Showtime)

Witches and werewolves and creatures, oh my! The second season of Penny Dreadful is an even more gloriously ghoulish goulash of classic horror tropes, juxtaposing graphic scenes of bloody terror with flights of poignant poetic fancy. “We are bound on a wheel of pain, thee and me,” laments the Creature (Rory Kinnear) to his creator, Dr. Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway), impatiently awaiting the resurrection of a female mate. In another corner of Victorian London, Sir Malcolm Murray (Timothy Dalton) has barely laid his beloved daughter Mina to rest after vanquishing the vampire army that took her, and now must contend with a new satanic menace imperiling his tormented ward Vanessa Ives (Eva Green). “Together, we have seen things not of this world and have proven ourselves capable of defeating them,” Malcolm not so humbly brags. That was then, this is now. And the nightmare is just beginning.