X
- 2020
- TV-MA
- SHOWTIME
- 2020
- TV-MA
- SHOWTIME
Summary Set in 1938 Los Angeles, detective Tiago Vega (Daniel Zovatto) and his partner Lewis Michener (Nathan Lane) investigate a shocking murder and soon find themselves facing strange and powerful forces like Magda (Natalie Dormer) in this next (but unrelated) chapter of John Logan's Penny Dreadful.
Created By: John Logan
- 2020
- TV-MA
- SHOWTIME
- 2020
- TV-MA
- SHOWTIME
Penny Dreadful: City Of Angels
Season 1 Premiere: Apr 23, 2020
60
4.4
Where to Watch
Summary Set in 1938 Los Angeles, detective Tiago Vega (Daniel Zovatto) and his partner Lewis Michener (Nathan Lane) investigate a shocking murder and soon find themselves facing strange and powerful forces like Magda (Natalie Dormer) in this next (but unrelated) chapter of John Logan's Penny Dreadful.
Created By: John Logan
Where to Watch
All Seasons
Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 16 Critic Reviews
60
38% Positive
6 Reviews
6 Reviews
63% Mixed
10 Reviews
10 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 16 Critic Reviews
60
38% Positive
6 Reviews
6 Reviews
63% Mixed
10 Reviews
10 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
City of Angels is fascinating to watch, set in a world that’s richly imagined and beautifully brought to life, populated by sharply drawn characters who consistently wrestle with ideas of right, wrong and everything in between.
In setting, tone, and several fine and evocative performances, “City of Angels” cements itself as a fine entrant in the horror-on-TV genre.
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 69 User Ratings
4.4
35% Positive
24 Ratings
24 Ratings
14% Mixed
10 Ratings
10 Ratings
51% Negative
35 Ratings
35 Ratings
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 69 User Ratings
4.4
35% Positive
24 Ratings
24 Ratings
14% Mixed
10 Ratings
10 Ratings
51% Negative
35 Ratings
35 Ratings
The first episode was promising, interesting way to approach Mexican culture and United State's social context during WWII. Natalie Dormer is superb, and the other actors are great as well. Nathan Lane caught my attention. Looking foward to what comes next.
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There’s a LOT going on in each episode of “City of Angels,” and some storylines aren’t as compelling as others. Still, this is an appropriately terrifying next chapter in the “Penny Dreadful” series.
Style is this Showtime series' strongest point, but it can only work its magic to a certain point. Beyond that threshold "City of Angels" is mostly an excellent, well-meaning concept that doesn't quite live up to the grandeur of its intent.
Other than a few fun scenes and a scene-stealing performance from Natalie Dormer, it’s just too inconsistent and flat overall to connect as anything but a footnote to the first series for now.
Nathan Lane adds a bit of zing as Vega’s partner, an old hand with a big heart. But Dormer’s Magda should rule proceedings as an agent of chaos, whispering evil into the ears of men. Instead, she’s underpowered. A show like this needs to commit either to being a horror or a riot, and it does neither.
City of Angels is so scattershot. Bouncing around between separate character studies isn’t inherently a bad thing—early Game of Thrones turned it into a phenomenon—but City of Angels stretches itself so thin you can’t really care about any place it lands.
It takes its time to properly start off, but when it does i find it pretty satisfying. We see many different angles on the same story and i personally find every single one interesting. Also, Natalie Dormer is absolutely amazing and still (9 episodes in) gives me the chills. Overall, not as good as the original one but i find it very interesting and enjoyable, with really not a moment of bad acting and some moments of amazing acting.
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I wanted to watch this show because I liked the gothic horror reinvention of monsters of the original Penny Dreadful. The problems with this spinoff are the story, the characters and the directing. The acting is amazing, and the commitment to period music, dress and esthetic are top notch. But all that glitz and a talented cast won't make you care about the bland story and one dimensional characters they play. The creators seemed to think if they wove enough of these simple stories together it'd add up to something, but instead it bogs everything down. None of them have much for character development. The season ends with a "cliffhanger" which clearly shows they thought they'd have a lot longer for extended story arcs. But when they all progress so slowly, without clear victory moments it adds up to nothing.
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Only in name is this series comparable in quality to the original series.
It's difficult to become attached to any of these characters, especially compared to the fantastic writing and casting of the first series.
Maybe if it was a stand alone, without the Penny Dreadful title, it would have been received better? At least for me all I'm doing is wishing it was season 4
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I wasn’t a fan of the original. Never seen it. I did watch the first half hour of the pilot, before exiting in disgust. Honestly, I really wanted to love this show. It seemed like it would be right up my alley. The production design (Maria Coso) is fantastic as is the cinematography and costume design. More latinx representation? Addressing gentrification? L.A. history? Noir? I am totally down.
Others have complained about the over abundance of plot threads. A well written script might have been able to weave those threads together, but this is not well written. The use of the Arroyo Seco Parkway instead of the more commonly used Chavez Ravine was encouraging, making me hope that there would be some depth here. But no. Within the first half hour, it became clear that the pilot’s writer had a very superficial understanding of Los Angles culture, especially Los Ángeles Mexican American culture. It’s as if he **** some significant historical highlights from Wikipedia, sprinkled in some high school Spanish vocabulary, and called it a day.
It’s as if some white guy latched on to an injustice against minorities without bothering to learn much (beyond reading the Wikipedia article) about that minority. I realize that part of the job of the writer here is to take a spooky supernatural element and push it into a blood chillingly unfamiliar form, but the writer NEEDS TO UNDERSTAND the cultural elements with which he is working. Anything less is doing a disservice to the culture. Insulting it, or worse.
I can’t be more specific without spoiling the plot, but I’m basically unhappy with the characterization of an important Mexican holiday that is conveyed by Mexican American characters themselves. When your own characters are that ignorant of their own culture, you’re not doing your job as a writer.
There are a fair amount of Spanish surnames on the cast and crew list, so I suppose we can be happy about the jobs. I just really hate it when minorities get exploited like this. You want a better ghost story with more authentic minority cultural representation, go watch The Terror: Infamy.
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Production Company:
- Desert Wolf Productions
Initial Release Date: Apr 23, 2020
Number of seasons: 1 Season
Rating: TV-MA
Awards
Critics Choice Super Awards
• 1 Nomination
Set Decorators Society of America, USA
• 1 Nomination
