I grew up on the classic Universal and Hammer horror films. My love for vintage monster movies is what sparked my lifelong passion for filmmaking. So when I discovered Showtime was producing Penny Dreadful, a new series based on the icons of gothic literature, I was cautious… after all, the last decade has seen vampires, werewolves, zombies and mummies gutted, re-branded and resurrected more times than Christopher Lee played Dracula. But when I learned producer Sam Mendes and frequent collaborator/screenwriter John Logan, hot off the success of Skyfall, were calling the shots, I knew it wasn’t going to be Twilight.

If you happened to be at South By Southwest this year, you were probably bombarded by Penny Dreadful logos plastered all over buses and banners. These daily reminders guaranteed I couldn’t miss the debut’s screening.

Directed by Spanish filmmaker, Juan Antonio Bayona (2007’s The Orphanage), the first episode paints a bleak, visually dark portrait of late Victorian London. A mysterious force is butchering women, causing citizens to speculate the return of Jack the Ripper (…of course.) Eva Green plays Vanessa Ives, a clairvoyant who has a mysterious, but seemingly powerful connection to another world. Dour, and clad in black, she recruits the talents of Ethan Chandler (Josh Hartnett), a dashing, American gunslinger who earns a living in a touring Wild West show. It is implied Chandler has a complicated past, but he’s willing to put it behind him and leave the show to see what Vanessa has to offer.

It turns out Ives is aiding Sir Malcolm Murray (007 himself, Timothy Dalton), a famed big game hunter, who now prowls the bowels of the city to find his daughter.

The trio makes their way underground and runs across a vampire-guarded slaughterhouse filled with more body parts than Leatherface’s freezer. While Malcolm’s daughter is nowhere to be found, they make quick work of a particularly monstrous bloodsucker and borrow the remains for further investigation. This leads them to a brilliant young doctor, whose study of human life make him ideal for researching the body.

Without spoiling too much, this first episode does an admirable job planting enough subtle references to keep the literary viewer excited, but is well-written enough that it should keep your average TV watcher coming back for more.

While there is certainly humor, the tone of the episode is filled with dread and plays the material with genuine earnestness. This isn’t Abbott and Costello, Van Helsing or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. This a universe where Dracula can be threatened, and interact with the Frankenstein Monster (if that should happen) without looking like an elementary school Halloween party.

The show’s title itself signals a return to the genre’s roots; the penny dreadful was a cheaply distributed, pulp pamphlet that offered readers lurid tales of mystery and horror, and introduced the likes of Sweeney Todd to the pop culture landscape. Even Josh Hartnett’s cowboy showman has a basis in the dreadful’s American counterparts, which featured the frontier exploits of Davy Crocket, George Custer and Jesse James.

During the Q&A, I asked Bayona if he was directly inspired by the monster movies of yesteryear. He replied that while he was a fan of the works of Terence Fisher (director of several of Hammer Film’s best known pictures), and the Universal classics, he and creator John Logan went back to the original novels to create a world that was fresh and hadn’t really been seen before. I can honestly say I can’t wait to see what the team has in store next.

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