…That a handful of characters have become overused TV brands, like Sherlock Holmes and Dracula, and every year delivers another crate of old wine in new bottles (See ‘How Crime Novels Took To The Straight And Narrow’, below) Sam Mendes has announced that he’ll direct a “psychosexual” horror TV series featuring Dracula and Dr Frankenstein, set in Victorian London.
The series, Penny Dreadful, will be screened by Showtime, and is described as a ‘very psychological and highly erotic’ horror detective drama featuring various fictional characters investigating supernatural events in turn-of-the-century Victorian London. Mendes will use Dr Frankenstein and his creature, characters from Bram Stoker’sDracula, Oscar Wilde’s creation Dorian Gray and possibly Jack the Ripper. Perhaps he could chuck in Tarzan, Batman and Mickey Mouse while he’s at it.
Meanwhile, it turns out that ‘Ripper Street’, which actually hinges on an interesting premise, is directed by Tom Shankland, the director I’ve been working with on a London-based horror anthology. I think it’s rather good even though the whores look like catwalk models instead of poor people with no teeth. I hate the name of the series, though, which, apart from being distasteful, once again shows how desperate commissioners are to lock into a brand. The series plays out more like ‘The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes’ – if anyone’s old enough to remember that. There are also two volumes of stories that go with that older series.
As a matter of interest, the Ten Bells pub (which of course is still there) was briefly renamed the Jack the Ripper until public outcry forced it back to its original name. I can’t imagine they’d rename the Golden Lion ‘The Dennis Nielsen’ (it was where he met his victims) and I don’t approve of lionising murderers.
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes has been released on DVD by Network in two volumes. The late, great Robert Stephens as Max Carrados in one episode. Max, a blind detective who has so attuned his other senses that the lack of vision barely hinders him at all. There is also a brilliantly roguish turn by Peter “Grouty” Vaughan in another episode later on. I am going to have root through some boxes and dig those sets out now. Haven’t seen Ripper Street, partly because of its title – very much a turn off. Might give it a go on the i-player.
I was starting to wonder whether my boyfriend and I were the only people who love Ripper Street (yes, even though the title is awful.) The knee-jerk reactions of a certain journalists (ie usually middle-aged, overweight, slightly hysterical London-based females, sorry but it’s true!) over the first episode made me despair. Oh, come on, they’ve really never seen anything. It’s all pseudo-feminist rubbish. They should read the Crimson Petal and the White. This stuff did happen.
I think it’s visually great, I like the science/reason/atheism angle (it’s a refreshing change), the steampunk references… It’s modern but set in Victorian times, I don’t think it pretends to be a true historically accurate series.
The following two episodes didn’t have one ounce of sexual stuff in them (apart from the ravings of an old rich woman whose dead husband used to go to prostitutes), so the killjoys can sleep tight. I really, really enjoy the series! I like the sound of Sam Mendes’project, thanks for sharing the news!
That’s a fine looking illustration, although it might also have had a cat frther back.
I have been enjoying RIPPER STREET as a guilty pleasure (well, not THAT guilty)… The look of the series is of feature film quality (shot in Ireland, I believe) and though they use ‘ripper’ as a hook, the stories thus far appear to be using it as a springboard into exploring the period rather than picking the bones of the ripper story one more time. I thought they handled it rather well with the opening sequence. It would not surprise me a bit to learn the ripper tours started before the blood was dry on the cobblestones.
I find the ripper fascination more interesting as a physiological issue than an unsolved mystery.
I find the American character annoying, to the extent that he is clearly there to increase the comfort zone for the BBC AMERICA crowd. I have noticed a lot of that happening on both BBC and ITV series.
PS: Fabienne – the third episode was still pretty kinky – have you forgotten about the cross-dressing bordello? The sexual aspects feel a little gratuitous, but it will be interesting to see them explore the underbelly of the rampant hidden sexuality of the time. Always nice to know that hypocrisy isn’t new!
OOps, Rick, yes, forgot. The cross-dressing bordello. But the female journalists I was talking about cannot complain about “beaten women, raped women, dead women all lined up for your delectation on a Sunday night” (quote)because, well, these were not women.
I think if you’re someone who’s used to and/or aware of more “alternative” cultures (fashion, music, cinema, art), where horror/fantasy/fetish/erotica/burlesque/pin-up/Victoriana/gothic etc. interconnect, this exploration of the dark side of life doesn’t shock you as much as people who only gravitate/are only aware of the mainstream. Just a thought, I don’t pretend I’m right. It’s just the hysterical articles were just unbelievable.
I quite like Ripper Street; it probably gives a good idea of how these areas looked at the time.Apart, that is, from the excesses of the costume department.Some of the clothing looks way too theatrical ,particularly that of the annoying and unnecessary American surgeon who appears to be wearing some kind of fancy dress.The same kind of thing was used in the recent Sherlock Holmes films.I know this series is obviously not meant to be completely realistic, but it is just too ‘Doctor Who’.
I remember “The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes!” Loved it. introduced me to the work of Hodgson, Freeman, Orczy and Fergus Hume. Took some assiduous library skills to locate their stories. This was way before there was a tie-in paperback of the series over here in the US.
We have a Dr. Jekyll & Mr Hyde rip-off soon premiering over here. Like Elementary it’s set in present day. The doctor is cleverly renamed Jason Cole which if you say it very fast and slur it a bit resembles Jekyll. I would have expected something along the lines of Hank Jackson and Ted Hyman, but Jason Cole and Ian Price are just as bland. Like US daytime soap character names. Cole has an alter ego bad boy who screws around with women, lavishly spends the doctor’s money on sports cars and trips to the tropics, leaves ominous video messages on his laptop. I’m guessing wech week viewers willtune in to see how well Cole is doing in trying to get control of his bank account and save his reputation and put an end to Price’s hedonism. Zzzzz…
Penny Dreadful sounds just that. Did Mendes just want to make his version of Leaugue of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Kim Newman and Alan Moore et al should ‘send the boys round’ as they used to say.
Ripper Street seems to owe far too much of a debt to the Downey Jr Sherlock Holmes movies (opening credits a case in point!), and the over-mannered cod(s’ wallop) Victorian speech patterns just draw out what could be much punchier dialogue – did the Victorians actually talk that way?
I would think it probably owes more to the written word of the era – and as we know, people don’t necessarily talk the way they write.
The American doctor could’ve been intersting – was there not a Yank thought to be the Whitechapel murderer?
Now there would be a twist…
Didn’t need the crutch of Jack the Ripper to hang its hat on, if I may mix metaphors. “We need a crime drama and a period drama – hey, waitaminnit!”
Wasn’t it the ‘Rivals’ series that had an episode on Carnacki, the Ghost Finder? Now that would make more interesting viewing than most of the Beebs output!
Doing my best to counteract the prevailing trends — just ordered a whole new shipment of Bryant and May in audio for the library!
I’d love to see some Carnacki on tv, even if I’m not sure the original stories would translate well on the screen -still, it would be great.
I don’t mind seeing endless ‘reinterpretations’ of those characters, even if it’s already wearing thin and feeling cheap; what’s most ridiculous to me is the -justly put between quotes by Admin- psychosexual part of the pitch: nearly every time I saw this label on a thriller or a horror story (always proudly used by the publishers/producers themselves, mind), it was a way to justify the self-indulgent inclusion of lazy trash without bothering about the actual story too much, or the opposite: underwhelming ‘shock value’ for bored housewives. You know: ‘psychological’ because it’s got brains in it, but also ‘erotic’ so don’t worry, you’ll get your thrills too. All under the guaranteed cultural appeal of those timeless literary icons, who just conveniently happen to be in the public domain.
Many of the good old stories had investigators who were ratiocinationists, rather than masters of kung fu fury. Their adventures were often more reflective of their mind and the criminal’s with description being played down.
This gives the film maker not a lot to draw on when concocting a show for the current audience’s taste. Therefore so many additives are mixed in the story becomes something that’s hard to reconcile with the original. And it often shows.
One horrible Judge Dee film made unlike the original, Sherlock a man of constant action, Father Brown (a really old film) not at all like G.K. Chesterton’s. And how much erotica can be found in any of these – well, maybe in Judge Jee – his Number Three wife looked rather interesting. She did a nice tea ceremony with a bit of ankle.
I am glad I’m not the only one who thought of Kim Newman & Alan Moore!
Dan, if the old Father Brown film you are talking about is the one with Alec Guinness, I disagree with you! I thought it perfectly captured the important aspects of G.K.C.’s character, both with how he solves the crimes and his scant concern for earthly justice (and chief concern for saving Flambeau’s soul). I don’t think the mini-series with Kenneth Moore addressed those things. There was a really bad US TV movie with Barnard Hughes which started off with Father Brown out jogging with his dog. I knew the movie was in trouble right there.
I wonder exactly which audience Ripper Street (or should that be cul-de-sac?) Is aimed at. Maybe it’s pitched to those familiar with characters from games and/or other movies and not from the original literature? Personally I really enjoyed the Canadian series Murdoch Mysteries. Although a lightweight Sherlock type series it was refreshing to see a character who didn’t always get it right.
Ripper Street is grim stuff. I find it totally unwatchable while my other half loves it. It’s interesting that an earlier correspondent said that RS was a costume drama crime drama cross over. He missed another sub genre cross over, forensic porn, a very different beast from crime drama, universally dirty, depressing and nasty
Sam: No not one with Alec Guiness. I’d now like to see that one as he was great. As a former President once said: “I’m misremembering which one that was.” By the way have any of you ever read G. K.’s The Man Who Was Thursday? Now there is another great read.
Anyone received the graphic novel yet? I’m beginning to feel like I live on McMurdo station and am waiting for the first flight in of the season.
Expectations low despite it being Sam Mendes thanks to that “psychosexual”. Too often folk who concentrate on the undeniable sexual sub-texts of horror classics make the mistake of assuming that what explains part of it explains all of it and so end up making it less interesting.
I did watch the first R. St. and it didn’t grab me, it was well made, hats off to all the people that worked on it.
But, and there is always a but, I personally found it too clean, overlit, slightly derivative, and had too many anacronisms, for me. But then I can be a massive fuss-pot.
Plundering the well for old characters, is in part a necessary evil as well as making financial sense, they are all or mostly out of copyright. And they only live on in the public mind exactly because they are refreshed with each new version being put before a new generation of viewers. Without it they would just wither away.
There are any number of creations that were as wildly popular in their own time as Holmes, but languish now only in the stacks or in peoples memory. Sexton Blake, Paul Temple, The Saint and many more.
G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown has just had life breathed into it again with a new BBC adaptation. I must confess [sorry, not intentional] to not having seen it yet, but have hope that it might be half decent. Or it will just go the way of the others.
As to the ‘psychosexual’ is this a thing that’s hot because of ‘Shifty Fades of ….Zzzzz’? It’s a subtext, people, if you waggle it about in peoples faces, it gets very old, very quickly. You can ride the ‘outrage bus’ only for a short while, before people cotton on, and then you will be more busted than a Southend teeny-pop outfit.
Dan-I have read Chesterton’s great ”The Man who Was Thursday”, and I keep meaning to re-read it. There’s something about the nature of a lot of on-line behaviour that reminds me of the one of the book’s recurring themes-that of people entering secretive communities, only to discover that none of the other members are quite what they seem. In the cyber age, where we regularly converse with people who are in effect complete strangers,known to us sometimes only by single names, or pseudonyms, that strikes quite a chord. It’s many years since I read it, but that idea still haunts.
I quite like the new Father Brown with Mark Williams, and I quite like Ripper Street too, far too many snarky comments online about Edwardian door lintels and such, reminds me of the near hysterical postings on IMDB about Merlin wrongly using forks . . .
With regard to Murdoch mysteries: the CBC has taken over the series and we’ve just had the first few of the new series. If anyone in your area shows them do watch at least a couple and hope you meet the absolutely appalling Canadian government spy who steps in to warn them that the government is interested and so the mounties are taking over the investigation, or one of the situations in which Murdoch calls on Alexander Graham Bell (who happens to be in town) or like last week when we had Winston Churchill visiting and getting mixed up in the sudden death of his friend. As he’s leaving it’s suggested he might want to put the incident in memoirs later, but he replies that it “wasn’t my finest hour.” Cheap shot and worse is the silhouette he makes as he leaves the station, but it’s so bad it’s great.