In a Richly Designed ‘Penny Dreadful: City of Angels,’ Evil Is Both Human and Supernatural

Alci Rengifo

“Penny Dreadful: City of Angels” is a curious case of TV reinvention. After a three year hiatus the Showtime series returns, dumping Victorian England for 1930s Los Angeles. It’s not a continuation by any means of the original premise. Eva Green, Frankenstein and Dorian Gray have vanished. Instead showrunner John Logan keeps the title, adds a subhead and recasts the narrative as a noir. It’s an entertaining pulpy experience, so true to the fedora hat tradition that half-way through the season you wonder why the spooky supernatural angle is even necessary. 

“City of Angels” opens in a field where Mexican migrants toil away. Two entities face off, the demon Magda (Natalie Dormer) and Mexican Catholic deity Santa Muerte (Lorenza Izzo). Magda then sets the field ablaze and puts in motion a plan to influence upcoming, dark events in Los Angeles. Fast forward to 1938 and we meet a Chicano named Tiago Vega (Daniel Zovatto) who has just made detective in the LAPD. While Tiago’s mother Maria (Adriana Barraza) is happy for him, it’s not the case with his hot-headed brother Raul (Adam Rodriguez), a union leader who leads protests against city construction projects threatening to snuff out working class communities. These are openly racist times as well in L.A. and Tiago faces tough scrutiny from white colleagues, although he’s saddled with a worthy partner in Lewis Michener (Nathan Lane).  Their first major case involves mutilated corpses discovered with ritual makeup. The case soon leads them into a nest of citywide corruption involving local officials and a creeping fascist presence. Magda wanders through all of it, “whispering” into the ears of victims to provoke shootouts and fuel Nazi schemes. One of her targets is an expatriate German, Dr. Peter Craft (Rory Kinnear), who also belongs to the local German-American Bund. 

As pulp noir “City of Angels” delivers impressively with a lush visual style that revives a classic, cinematic look to 1938 Los Angeles. World War II, Nazis in the west coast and crooked politicians have been endlessly recycled, but Logan gives it all a fresh air by focusing on the theme of Mexican-American culture. Rarely does Chicano history serve as nothing more than a side note in TV period thrillers, and classic films like “Zoot Suit” or “La Bamba” still mainly serve a niche audience. Logan thankfully makes it the central idea here within the more mainstream plotting involving Magda spreading her macabre havoc. Because it’s pulpy we can forgive Logan for pulling out the tired recent cliché of Santa Muerte, which has quickly become the go-to religious icon for anything involving Mexicans in action thrillers. The strange icon wasn’t much of a storytelling tool until the recent drug war across the border gave it a perverse, alluring prominence. Now it appears in every movie from “Sicario: Day of the Soldado” to “Bad Boys for Life.” Inevitably Tiago’s mother is a devotee of the saint, which in this series represents protection over the dead and not the scythe-carrying specter of other shows or films.

To his credit Logan doesn’t reverse to drug gangs to cast his Mexican characters. They become conduits for racial and social tensions in World War II-era California. Tiago has to choke down “spic” jokes at the police station and then suspicion from his own family and community, who see him as a class traitor. During a clash between police and Mexicans trying to block a construction project, Magda uses her whispering power to provoke a bloody confrontation where Tiago is forced to fire on one of his own. But even if there hadn’t been a demon around, would he have had another choice?

The original “Penny Dreadful” was a more fantastical idea with its inspiration coming from 19th century British stories infamous for their lurid style. Its third season finale left several character arcs up in the air. Logan apparently didn’t care for wrapping any of it up, going instead for a fresh take on the very idea of the show itself. “City of Angels” feels more like two good concepts meshed into one. Natalie Dormer, again with that ominous charm she had in “The Tudors” and “Game of Thrones,” turns Magda into a perfect embodiment of evil as a silent force pushing people towards hurtful actions. She’s fun as a shape-shifter who takes on various personas from an office worker to a German immigrant who begins to seduce Dr. Craft.

Yet she and Lorenza Izzo’s less engaging Santa Muerte just don’t feel all that essential. The rest of the story angles are engaging enough. There’s Tiago’s battles with the LAPD’s racist attitudes and his intense brothers, Raul and Mateo (Johnathan Nieves) and the murder case which could expose links between a corrupt politician and a shadowy Nazi agent (Thomas Kretschmann). Daniel Zovatto and Nathan Lane are well-matched, one as the young rookie delicately balancing identity and career, the other the seasoned veteran with an unfiltered tongue. As a pure detective story “City of Angels” is best when it has the spirit of movies like “Chinatown” and “L.A. Confidential.” The production design is also superb and rich, with tours of a long-gone city and its Mexican quarters where denizens dance salsa outside of a record store. 

Much of the best writing in this season evokes the dread of fascism as a malevolent force that can creep into a city without anyone noticing. Dr. Craft leads a small German-American Bund demonstration at a public park, using a convincingly friendly speech to protest U.S. involvement in any war with Nazi Germany. A corrupt city government official praises Hitler nonchalantly and later tells Raul to go “back where you came from,” after which Raul points out that he was actually born in the United States. These scenes are when “City of Angels” becomes more than just entertaining fantasy and more of a strong piece of fiction with real ideas. 

What Magda’s exact scheme is becomes hard to fully decipher at first. Because she’s a demon we can conclude that it’s simply her job to spread darkness around. The real darkness comes from the Nazis and racists Tiago and Lewis must confront. That could be Logan’s goal with “City of Angels,” to tell an old-fashioned mystery where the true monsters lack superpowers.

“Penny Dreadful: City of Angels” season one premieres April 26 and airs Sundays at 10 p.m. ET on Showtime.