The Frankenstein Chronicles: Season 2, Episode 6: Bride of Frankenstein

Marlott is captured and chained up and Esther is dead in the process of becoming not dead. Dippel is being super creepy with Esther. Harvey is being super creepy with Marlott. Everyone’s trying to out creepy everyone else and they’re all going for gold

Esther is resurrected - but that whole weird creepy beach vision which I thought was Marlott’s hallucination? Well it turns out like all the surreal moody visions, they’re actually real. This beach seems to represent… limbo? Maybe? ANyway this is why our not-entirely-dead people keep going there (because the land is life and the sea is death so the beach is sort of in between. Nice metaphor. Also points for moodiness. And making sure there are no seagulls. I feel seagulls would ruin this). And Esther, on her way back from death, is in the sea and drowning… until Marlott wades in and pulls her out

Which is nice but why does Esther need a helping hand back to the land of the living?

This also gives Marlot chance to tell Harvey what a terrible person he is killing his wife - he protests he didn’t but Marlot claims she set the fire that killed her because it was the only way to escape him. Because, yes, those creepy visions were real and were her ghost

While Dippel embraces Marlot as a sibling because they’re both not!dead people. He’s also passionate in his belief there is no god, this allows you to do anything but also is why he doesn’t want to die because it’s the end of everything. This from a man who literally sees a vision of life death and limbo AND sees ghosts. At least point being rather certain that there’s no afterlife seems… not the workings of a rational mind. “There is no afterlife now I’m going to lure this woman into following me into eternal life with the ghost of her son!”

I feel the writers may need a slap upside the head from an atheist

Harvey and Dippel are also working together - Harvey is really impressed with Dippel’s dad’s work - Dippel is really impressed that Harvey can replicate it but they both kind of need each other: Dippel is holding on to the formula for the catalyst while Dippel seems to be running out of the stuff and possibly unable to recreate it without Harvey’s genius.

But I’m getting ahead of myself - because while, as I said last episode, everyone on team bad guy knows each other and is working together, they’re all also all sharpening their knives for more quality back stabbing than a Tory Party conference.

The Dean is duly concerned that the current king is days away from dropping dead and Prince William the heir is Not a Fan and all those pesky murders. So when Renquist turns to him asking if the Dean will protect him the Dean happily says “god will protect you”. Which is religious talk for “you’re screwed”.

Renquist responds to this by going to Boz the journalist and exposing the Dean as the murderer trying to make lots of money out of Pyre Street. He also orders the Parish Watch to arrest Dippel for the murders just so he can have a scapegoat

Queenie, Dippel’s maid, does some of her own sleuthing in Dippel’s murder rooms and finds Nightingale’s keepsake. A token mothers left with their babies at the foundling home where she and Nightingale grew up so, if matters changed, the mother could prove which child was there’s by describing this unique token. She has proof Nightingale was there and takes it to the Inspector, threatening to take it to the Parish watch if he won’t act

Yes that’s the watch and the police after Dippel now.

Which is why, with Esther newly awakened and screaming, the police arrive. Dippel and Harvey promptly turn on each other, fighting over Dippel’s dad’s catalyst and the formula: Harvey breaks the bottle which leaves Dippel distraught and all but licking it from the floor. This is why I think Dippel is incapable of recreating it - which is why he needs Hervey, I guess.

I wonder if Esther and Marlott will need that catalyst as well?

The Frankenstein Chronicles: Season 2, Episode 5: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

And lo we learn that not only is everyone really creepy and really evil but quite possibly all working together as well

Except Sir Robert Peel - but he’s desperate to get his admittedly very nice sounding reforms passed so is willing to work with just about anyone to make that happen despite the opposition of the evil dean of Westminster and his evil murdering coroner Renquist. We’ve already seen him willing to work with Dippel and now he introduces his new advisor who will hopefully convince Prince William (heir to the throne, brother to George IV, current king who seems to side with the the Dean but is also not in great health) to support him. Oh Sir Robert, such good intentions, such terrible bed fellows

His whole moment is somewhat disturbed by Nightingale's body washing up, minus heart

Seriously show, I’m not going to forgive Nightingale's wasted death.

We see Queenie, naturally, consumed by grief over this - revealing she loved him and also fears she may have been responsible for his death by telling him about the creepy things in creepy Dipple’s creepy home. She is convinced to go to the police with this but the Inspector isn’t exactly thrilled with the idea that a ranting Nightingale may have gone after one of the richest men in London because he thought a hanged man had committed a murder. He dismisses her

But when Sir Peel comes to him to point out they’re now competing with evil church people so there better be some leed, the Inspector seizes on it as better than nothing

Marlot has gone full angst mode because Sean Bean, that’s why. He’s driving poor Esther off, convinced that everyone around him dies because Nightingale’s death is good for some Manpain. He does ramble about being haunted by the ghosts of murdered people he can’t help. Which sounds bad but it’s not like any of these ghosts even invest in chains or anything. It’s pretty low key haunting

He does get a lead on Lord Hervey though, from Boz, who is more than a little miffed that the church Coroner Renquist feeding him lies has made him look like a fool. Boz recruits Marlot and tells him LORD HERVEY LIVES and is working for the Home Secretary.

This leads to Marlot intimidating Renquist just because he can for some reason but not learning much beyond how evil traders in body parts have lots of ice - so he’s now off to harass Dipple. While Renquist goes to Lord Hervey because it turns out he is Lord Hervey’s protege and has a kind of creepy devotion which may or may not be gay subtext but if it is I’m going to break things because this is nooooot a good look. Lord Hervey reveals his plan to basically throw Dipple to the wolves (because, yes, Hervey knows Dipple. Seriously all the bad guys are working together here) if the king dies and they don’t have a powerful patron. Renquist is smart enough to realise Hervey may do the same to him but too devoted to actually follow through with that

The Frankenstein Chronicles: Season 2, Episode 4: Little Boy Lost

Spence has previously warned us that going against the Dean of Westminster will get you murdered. But when he sends out a directive to have his reverends spouting that the plague is the fault of the naughty naughty sinners his temper snaps since he knows the well is being deliberately poisoned. He speaks up, ranting in church

And the Dean catches up with him, wielding a knife to stab him into silence - while also making an evil evil speech about how he likes to listen to the noises people make as he murdered them. Just in case we were under any real illusion about how evil this man is. He just needs an evil moustache to twirl.

This doesn’t make Merlot’s life any easier because he discovers Spence’s body and is duly horrified and grief stricken and, well, Sean Bean. Honestly when this man smiles the world will end.

He’s also discovered near the body and chased by the police who naturally suspect he is the murderer. He’s even seen by Nightingale leaving the scene which leaves Nightingale convinced he’s the murderer

Of course telling the Inspector that a dead man is behind the murders reassures no-one: and his Inspector suspends him on account of the fact he’s accusing dead men of murder and that’s not a good look in a policeman.

Merlot does follow Billy Oate’s lead on the dead man in the well and finds that a ship was quarantined due to plague. Following that they find the rest of the crew - where they’ve been put in an abandoned room basically to die. Merlot walks through the gauntlet of ghosts they’ve left behind - this time not reacting. It looks like he’s finally accepted what they are.

Meanwhile at the House of Dipple-this-man-is-definitely-a-serial-killer Queenie the maid continues to be freaked out by the creepy serial killer house she’s living in. She tries to tell Nightingale (who may live there? They’re both foundlings from the same orphanage which is their link) but she’s distracted comforting him about seeing dead people and his unresolved issues over Flora.

Dipple is holding a party to show off his murder doll and he invites Esther - who in turn invites Merlot to be her plus one because she needs another poor person to be super awkward and out of place in the rich guy’s home.

There the doll is every bit as creepy as you can imagine and Dipple focuses on emitting the most intense serial killer vibes ever. Even though the doll is a woman in make up it still manages uncanny valley. For some reason rather than watch the marionette in case it launches itself at the crowd and starts killing people, Merlot decides to go wandering through the house instead. As one does. Seriously I can see no reason why Merlot decides it’s appropriate to do that. He finds Dipple’s secret spooky door but Queenie the maid shows up to shoo him off for appalling house guest manners.

The Frankenstein's Chronicles, Season 2, Episode 3 Seeing the Dead

The plague continues to kill many people, including whole families. We see more utterly poor people dropped into plague pits, unable to afford a consecrated burial and having to invent their own burial tradition.

Moved to pity, Merlot goes to try and offer charity to a woman who has lost so many of her children already - but she’s already plagued and would rather have his help cleaning up. She also begs him to bury her and her remaining children next to each other

Ouch…

There’s also more talk about god abandoning them and we learn more about the evil Dean of Westminster from Spence, Merlot’s new friend/contact/boss. He was an ex-priest. He admits he used to drink - but the reason he was kicked out wasn’t the drink, it was opposing the Dean. He further reveals that the three dead priests (there’s been a third murder) were part of an alliance fighting against the wicked Dean and his terribad plant to sell lots of church land to make himself super super super rich. And now they got murdered. Spence doesn’t think it’s a coincidence

But Merlot goes further - grabbing a map of the area and plotting the people who died - and find that the deaths are clustered very closely together - all on Pyre street. An area which will be worth a lot of money… IF the slums are cleared out. Spence doesn’t believe a man can call down plagues - but Merlot is convinced Lord Hervey could do it with his evil science. Of course he kind of thinks Lord Hervey is behind everything

They go investigating and Merlot realises that the dead all get water from the same well (take a moment to praise John Snow who did this in real life. No, not that John Snow; your history teacher is ashamed of you) - and when he excavates he finds a body in the well, with a sailor tattoo. Clearly put there deliberately to contaminate the water.

While he discovers this Merlot also screams and rants and raves at a crowd of people only he can see - which i think are the ghosts who died. I’m definitely going with ghosts not visions.

Also in town is Mrs. Wild’s Penny exhibition which is, amusingly, presenting a play of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I think we’re going to see a lot more of Mrs. Wild as she’s already showing compassion, wit, snapping intelligence and insight which makes her interesting in the brief moments she appears.

One of the members of her troupe is Billy Oates - from season 1. He was a criminal who controlled Flora and sorta worked for Lord Hervey and who Merlot got transported. He is now back, after becoming a sailor. Merlot and Billy have a few confrontations (involving punching and knives) since, obviously, their history is not great and Merlot is super obsessed with Lord Hervey - but Billy insists that he is not involved with the man and has no idea where he is. And the fact both he and the corpse became sailors with similar tattoos is coincidence. He does agree to help find where he got the tattoo though

About that latest murder - Nightengale finds the body before the Parish watch and quickly steals it so they can do their own autopsy much to frustration of the evil Dean’s evil minions. This means he gets the actual autopsy -including that the heart was carefully removed by an experienced and capable killer and probably not an escaped lunatic from Bethlem.

He also earns the respect of Sir Peel who is currently on side with anyone who opposes the evil Dean. Especially since the Dean is preventing him creating new cemetaries to help ease the burden of the over-burdened plague cemeteries. Because that would eat into the Dean’s profits. Yes, he’s evil.

The Frankenstein's Chronicles: Season 2, Episode 2: Not John Marlott

Merlot continues to have lots of ominous dreams and visions about Lord Hervey, dying, Flora, despair and general awfulness. Especially since father Ambrose his one real friend has been brutally murdered - and despite Nightengale’s attempts at investigation, the Dean of Westminster is being super evil and not letting the police get involved. Instead they want to just evacuate the area because it’s not just got a big murderer but also the plague. The poor people are duly mocking of these instructions because if they had the means to actually leave this squalor, well, they’d leave it already. But they’re poor and we’ve already established the evil church Dean is pretty evil and is also all olde timey and rich (two features which mean he doesn’t give a damn about the poor anyway).

The Parish watch may not be good for anything except annoying Nightengale, being nastily racist (which both shows that he’s evil and also kind of exposes the anachronism of how no-one else seems to be?), getting in the way of the murderer but they manage to be even worse when one of them spills dramatic stories to Boz, our journalist friend who is also a young Charles Dickens, about the killer being a beast and how the body was ripped apart. Boz, surprisingly sensibly for a tabloid journalist, considers this fanciful and absurd and encourages much mocking.

Because even tabloid rags in the 19th century had better journalistic standards than the Daily Mail.

Nightengale is also disturbed that there’s clues to Marlot all over this case with Father Ambrose carrying some of Marlott’s old pictures of his wife and child and it’s generally worrying him. There is an assumption that the escaped inmate from Bethel is just obsessed with John - which doesn’t encourage Nightengale any. Especially since he’s convinced Marlott killed Flora, his betrothed, while insane due to syphilis (which is why Marlot was hanged) and still has a lot of anger and hatred for him.

Marlott scrapes a living in the poor part of town, meeting and exposing a man who seems to have contacts (and is apparently an ex priest so expect Complications). Despite exposing one of the cons he’s running he decides to recruit Marlott as an obviously educated man to do some work for a finders fee - the work involves carting dead bodies from the plague ridden hovels and dropping them into plague pits. We also learn that churchyards are being dug up, the bodies dumped into pits, so the church can then re-sell the land to interr more bodies. In case we missed the not subtle themes here: the poor are leading terribad awful lives and the church is led by super evil people. We have lines like “why has god abandoned us” to really sell it.

We’re also given a quick lesson on how bodies in sealed coffins can explode and nearly have an adorable urchin killed by exploding coffin. Marlott leaps to the rescue and gets several shards of coffin in him. Which isn’t lethal because zombie but he still needs patching up - back to Esther the dressmaker who helps sew him up. She also refuses payment because taking payment for healing is wrong in her eyes. She also offers him super cheap room and board - when he protests the charity she points out there’s a serial killer (well he’s killed 2 priests I think you’re off the menu Esther) roaming about and she’d quite like a man about the house, ‘kay thanks.

While wandering about his business Merlott runs into Nightengale and it’s super dramatic. Nightengale sees Marlott’s scars and finds it hard to believe that he’s not the real Marlott, especially since he clearly knows things. Merlott continues to plead innocence in Flora’s death and points out that becoming a zombie has cured him of syphilis so no more irrationality. He also warns Nightengale that Lord Hervey is out there and really killed Flora and the dead vicars and is going to kill Lady Hervey and is like totally the worst. But Nightengale tells him Lady Hervey is already dead - which is a downer for Merlott because he and she kind of had a thing - and he still wants to re-kill Merlott for Flora’s death. This doesn’t work because a) Merlott is a super strong zombie and b) he tells Nightengale that Flora’s hallucination is behind him

The Frankenstein Chronicles: Season 2, Episode 1: Prodigal Son

So you watch a show and then it’s like 2 years before the next season. Which is unnecessary, television, very unnecessary

And then you forget about it so wait like 6 months to watch it. And then you’ve got to remind yourself who these characters actually are, what’s happening and why is there syphilis.

So with a hearty “I have no idea what I’m doing,” I’m diving in! Hey why change a habit of a lifetime?

John Merlotte was a policeman in King George’s new police force in London. He died and then Lord Hervey the very very nefarious brought him back to life all Frankenstein-y just 10 minutes before I gave up on this show ever having any supernatural elements

Now back from the dead, we’re focusing a lot on ATMOSPHERE. So it’s all a bit vague and emotive - and it’s extremely good at that. There’s definitely an incredibly powerful sense of Merlot’s confusion, his being out of place, and his confused and painful memories along with his extremely painful memories and experiences. It’s jarring and full of despair and bleakness

Yes, Sean Bean is delivering bleakness and despair. You’re shocked, folks, I’m sure.

He has been detained in Bethlem and has been there for 3 years. He’s near catatonic, hallucinating about the beach and his past and trying to find some sense in his confused and broken mind. The one person who visits him in all this time is Reverend Ambrose, who knew John before he was hanged, but even he can only get a brief reaction.

Until he finally breaks through to sanity - or something resembling it - and manages to yanks his chains from the wall and slit the throat of one of his guards.

I don’t know if undead Merlot is super strong or whether the chains are just poorly maintained.

He escapes and makes his way to Lord Hervey’s old home which is abandoned. At least I think he does. It’s also possible he’s hallucinating this - again atmosphere and theme and ominousness as he pieces together his memories about how Lord Hervey tried to make him into his protege/project and it didn’t go that well (hence Bethlem).

There’s also Lady Hervey as well, Lord Herving’s highly religious wife who was already highly conflicted about her husband’s experiments. The quote is “if he succeeds then we have a world without god”. And he just succeeded - and he’s likely to do more of these experiments: Merlot won’t be the last. She feels guilty and damned: and is pretty much convinced god has forsaken her and Merlot. And she needs him to hunt Hervey down (with a hint that since he’s damned anyway he might as well do a lot of fun murdering).

The Frankenstein Chronicles, Season 1, Episode 6: Lost and Found

So, Renee and I were taking, as we do, about whether to watch a show, keep watching it or whether we can drop it. We base this on whether it’s in our genre (so, no matter what, we’re always stuck with Vampire Diaries and since it’s a dystopian Renee has 2 wonderful series of Last Ship to look forward to. LUCKY HER!) and whether we like it (so Killjoys stays, so there).

By the end of the last episode we’d agreed to drop this series because the closest thing we have to the supernatural was Marlott’s hallucinations and we weren’t especially enjoying it

And then this episode happened. This is because I taunted Renee about Last Ship, isn’t it?

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

So John Marlotte has become more and more worrying in this episode, which everyone puts down to syphilis dementia since pretty much everyone knows. As John makes more accusations – against Sir William, against Sir Peel, Nightengale becomes more concerned, insisting on taking his gun back and making sure Flora doesn’t stay with him because she will be unsafe with a man with Syphilis.

Marlotte lays down the law and invokes his authority, Flora cannot leave! I’m not sure where this authority comes from beyond his white maleness.

Flora also tries to talk Marlotte around but he rants and raves and decides to lock her up. Marlotte is looking more and more out of control and worrisome. When Flora mentions, to try and make the ranting Marlotte back off, that Lord Hervey actually kicked her out and she never actually wanted to return to Marlotte.

Marlotte, who I would say is not making good decisions right now, but let’s be honest never really made good decisions, now decides that Lord Hervey is actually the big bad. He rants at Lady Harvey who, shockingly, doesn’t find slightly unhinged ranting and raving a very persuasive reason to betray her brother – though she seems to know something is terribad wrong with her brother. Also Marlotte totally wants her to marry him. His ranting is really not making a really good case for matrimony.

He does decide to go check out Lord Hervey and runs into his servant (who has been dubbed the Beast because someone randomly ranted about the Beast earlier in the season and everyone kind of forgot that reference to now) who I really do not understand why he deserves that but hey let’s stretch that. Anyway, beasty servant is currently holding Alice prisoner.

The Frankenstein Chronicles, Season 1, Episode 5: The Frankenstein Murders

Everything went very out of control last episode with the exposure of several murderers, lots of body buying and Sir Pool being most displeased by the scandal of the murders and the Frankenstein child (dubbed Alice) being exposed to the press

Lord and Lady Harvey are pretty happy as it looks like the Anatomy act will be stopped, which both pleases their faith and means Lord Harvey can continue with his hospital-which-is-totally-against-surgery (which is apparently a good thing). Also Lady Harvey may now not have to marry Sir Bently for money now her brother doesn’t have to shut down his charitable hospital.

These people do not seem to understand how money works. Or charities

She also kisses Marlotte because she’s really into the brooding type. I guess it’s the puritanism.

Marlotte is still on the case though because he would quite like to figure out who was murdering children. He gets an insight from Mary Shelley – she’s just heard about “Alice” and provides us with a flashback of insight: back in the day, she, her husband Percy, James Hogg and Sir William used to almost-kill each other and then use electricity to resuscitate themselves afterwards. For science!

Until it didn’t quite work and James Hogg didn’t get resuscitated and his death had to be passed off as a suicide. Oopsie.

See this is what happens in the days before television, the idle rich become bored and indulge in murder play

Anyway, Mary Shelley realises that the existence of Alice means that Sir William may be playing his naughty games again and goes to confront him. He doesn’t do much to allay suspicion by actually near throttling her – so she takes her suspicion to Marlotte.

At the same time the unconscious Flora is being “cared for” by the super creepy Sir Garnet, Sir William’s cousin. We quickly learn he’s the one with the thing for the Little Girl Lost poem (remember that? We spent like 3 episodes wallowing in that irrelevance), and he’s also the one who raped Flora. Thankfully she wakes up from her coma (convenient coma timing!) just as Marlotte is visiting to add her accusations to his – Marlotte takes the now-totally-in-good-health girl back home.

Who needs surgery when you have convenient healing powers!

The Frankenstein Chronicles, Season 1, Episode 4: The Fortune of War

So, after entering the tunnels last week, there is absolutely no way that they can’t avoid the plot for once.

In the tunnels they find a criminal gang with lots of bodies and Marlotte and Pritty (the grave robber) pose as a necrophiliac looking to acquire a fresh victim. They solicit the gang to murder someone for them and, in doing so, hope to follow them to their lair and find the people who have been killing people (and kids) to make the Frankenstein monster, as Sir Peel first asked Marlotte back in episode 1 between his bouts of hallucinations and angsty memories.

The trap is set –they just need a lot of money and a girl to play bait. Pritty, always reluctant, has the money. And Flora is back

Flora has had a not-convincing-anyone miscarriage which everyone delicately calls a miscarried, including Lord and Lady Harvey (along with realistic, yet condescending talk of just how terrible her life would be with an illegitimate child). She now wants to return to Marlotte where she feels safe. For some reason.

Especially since Billie the Fagin stereotype drops in to be a bit more menacing.

The only person who doubts Flora’s convenient miscarriage is Nightengale – which is unfortunate because he’s also the only one who actually cares about her as a person and not as a tool or bait and now that one person who cares about her is equally invested in condemning her actions. She does strike back firmly at the idea that the baby could have been just like her – because she’s not sure if being aborted wouldn’t have been better for her than the life she lived, which goes some way to deflating his outrage.

The Frankenstein Chronicles, Season 1, Episode 3: All the Lost Children

I’m, sadly, beginning to get a sense of the pacing of this series. Which is basically glacially slow. I know it’s full of emotion and pain and… it’s just that that seems to be the go to marker for any drama trying to present itself as “serious”. So I’ve seen a lot of it (and, really, In the Flesh not only set the bar for dramatic tragedy but shattered the bar and used the remains of the bar to beat our emotions to a bloody pulp)

So lots and lots of scenes of Marlotte woeing about his syphilis and dead family are very well done, definitely worthy of respect and praise form their impact. But at the same time they’re all just kind of predictable and I kind of want to just skim past back to the plot rather than circling (circling because it doesn’t really go anywhere) round in the same mopey, well acted, sad, but tired orbit.

Anyway, this book Marlotte decides to get Mary Shelley involved for… reasons. Some reasons. I honestly have no idea why Marlotte has seen a child murder and decided that popular literature is really the way to solve this.

Conveniently Mary Shelley is the woman who handed over William Blake’s last work to Marlotte and is even now all kinds of torn and consumed about her work and the pain it caused (not least of which appears to be rejection by what remains of her own family). She paints herself, in some ways, as a rebel – a rebel because she would do anything, including break the laws of god, if it will bring her family back.

Yes, more Marlotte angst, of course more Marlotte angst.

And we still have Nightengale – continually dismissed and ignored by Marlotte in a way that I dearly hope will be called out at some point. And Marlotte keeps sending him to secretly follow people which is beginning to look like a bad joke because the casting director still badly needs to throw in some Black extras so Nightengale doesn’t look like The Only Black Man in London

The Frankenstein Chronicles, Season 1, Episode 2: Seeing Things

Our protagonist Marlott decides to go visit the ailing William Blake. I have to call minor shenanigans at this – I mean you find that one of the missing girls has read a poem by William Blake and she has a dress the same colour so you go interview the author?

It’s a bit surreal especially with Blake maundering on about several kids disappearing and how it’s all the fault of a Beast with a Man’s Face and he needs to know the truth of the beast to find her.

William Blake then kicks the bucket and decides to leave his last work to this complete stranger on his death bed. And absolutely no-one considers that maybe someone should check that whole “sound mind and body” thing.

The last work is called “Prometheus”.

Let’s continue that theme with Marlott also visiting the office of the Home Office Pathologist (I’m not even sure why), Sir William. Instead he finds Sir William’s cousin Mr. Garnett there who we’re supposed to be all suspicious about because he gives Marlott shit for being a complete stranger in an important man’s office.

Beyond telling us we should see Mr Garnett who doesn’t want random strangers scuffing the furnishings, we learn that Sir William keeps creepy preserved body parts in formadehyde (because Regency Pathologist. This is not really unusual) and that he has a copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: A Modern Prometheus

I’m actually surprised to see that Frankenstein exists as a fictional creation within the world. That is unusual and really does turn the whole story on it’s head. Clearly we’re not going to run across a Victor Frankenstein in a basement somewhere making monsters.

But seeing this book, Marlott decides he absolutely needs to check this out – and he doesn’t even know what’s in it beyond it has the word “Prometheus”.

This is all just a little abstract a little too soon. I mean, it’s the second episode and Marlott has started paying attention to his mercury hallucinations – and he KNOWS he’s hallucinating. We know he’s hallucinating so why are we treating the hallucination as relevant? And now he’s looking at a poet’s very tangentially related last work and deciding to check out a book just because the city’s pathologist happens to be reading it. Is he so out of leads (well, yes) that he’s flailing this desperately?

I think we needed more pushing to the woo-woo before we start going this abstract and Marlott pursuing this many weird possibilities.

Meanwhile poor Nightingale is not filling with faith this character will be well used – he literally spends the whole book following people (and it would help if the show didn’t present him as the Only Black Man in London. Honestly how the hell was he supposed to unobtrusively follow ANYONE?).

The Frankenstein Chronicles, Season 1, Episode 1: A World Without God

London 1827, ah Regency – kind of Victorian but with more debauchery.

There are three kinds of Victoriana/Regency out there I’ve found:

Decorous which is all big houses and pretty clothes and intrigue, usually involving Rules of Decency and terrible terrible liberties

Swashbuckling, which has lots of brass and waist coats and brave man facing terrible peril and monsters (like brown people) in foreign lands.

Gritty with big bleak cities, lots of fog and poor people and everyone has cholera.

This is definitely Gritty.

Let’s look at the characters introduced.

Firstly we have Generic Angsty White Guy, inspector Marlott. He works for the River Patrol, hunting down opium smugglers and generally not being super popular with his fellows because Gritty. He finds a body of a child during one of his investigations – and this body seems to be seven separate children’s bodies sewn together. He has been recruited by the Home Secretary Sir Richard Pool to find out who is behind this.

Marlott also has syphilis, taking mercury, a requisite dead, tragic family (which may or may not be his fault because ANGST) and a loss of faith and a need for redemption.

Honestly, I’m not inspired. I’ve just seen so many of these characters. Grim, gritty, angst-laden, standing on a fridge of dead women and practicing his rugged grim suffering look which I’ve seen so many times over and over. Yawn not another one!

He has sidekicks – an urchin and Nightingale. I like to think Nightingale will be a well developed, interesting character but part of my cynically thinks that his inclusion involved the following discussion:

Producer #1: Shit… I’ve just realised the only Black person we have is a nasty child abusing villain

Producer #2: it’s a historical…

Producer #1: Stop, we’ve used that excuse way too often, they’re not buying it

Producer #2: Fine, throw in a Black sidekick

Producer #1: that’s good we can introduce his family and show how they live in 1827 London, the challenges they face and…

Producer #2: Make him an orphan.

Producer #1: Oh…

Producer #2: But a nice guy! That should do it.