Two years after Showtime shockingly cancelled Penny Dreadful, it’s bringing it back — but it’s going to be very different show than you remember.
THR reports that Showtime and Penny Dreadful showrunner / creator John Logan are reuniting for Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, a new series set to begin production in 2019.
Described as a “spiritual descendant” to the original series — which took place in an alternate Victorian-era England filled with gothic monsters and frights — City of Angels instead takes place in, if you hadn’t guessed by the name, Los Angeles. The time period will be circa 1938, and the show will take cues from Mexican folklore for its supernatural elements while also tackling issues of race and politics in the city. Here’s Logan on the series:
Penny Dreadful: City of Angels will have a social consciousness and historical awareness that we chose not to explore in the Penny Dreadful London storylines / We will now be grappling with specific historical and real-world political, religious, social and racial issues.
In 1938, Los Angeles was facing some hard questions about its future and its soul. Our characters must do the same. There are no easy answers. There are only powerful questions and arresting moral challenges. As always in the world of Penny Dreadful, there are no heroes or villains in this world, only protagonists and antagonists; complicated and conflicted characters living on the fulcrum of moral choice.
It’s a bizarre choice to take what basically sounds like a completely different series and put the Penny Dreadful name on it — but we’ll have to wait and see just how it ties into the world of the original show, or if any of the original characters will make an appearance in City of Angels‘ cast. But for now, at least, we know the show is back… sort of.