‘City of Angels’ sets Penny in 1938 Los Angeles

The next season of Showtime drama Penny Dreadful will have the title City of Angels, as the setting shifts from London to Los Angeles. John Logan, creator and executive producer, will continue in those roles. Production is expected to start in 2019.

Michael Aguilar is on board as an executive producer.

Penny Dreadful has been set in Victorian London, while the fourth season opens in 1938 Los Angeles, which Showtime said is infused with Mexican-American folklore and social tension. Rooted in the conflict between characters connected to the deity Santa Muerte and those allied with the Devil, Penny Dreadful: City of Angels will explore a mix of the supernatural and the “combustible reality of that period,” said Showtime, “creating new occult myths and moral dilemmas within a genuine historical backdrop.”

“We were so thrilled when John Logan came to us with this wildly original take on the Penny Dreadful mythology that explores both the human spirit and the spirit world here in California,” said Gary Levine, Showtime president of programming. “Penny Dreadful: City of Angels promises to be an extraordinary saga of familial love set against the terrifying monsters that are around us and within us.”

The show premiered in 2014 and its third season concluded in June 2016. Penny Dreadful has picked up 13 Emmy nominations. Showtime describes it as “a psychological thriller filled with dark mystery and suspense, where personal demons from the past can be stronger than vampires, evil spirits and immortal beasts.”

“Penny Dreadful: City of Angels will have a social consciousness and historical awareness that we chose not to explore in the Penny Dreadful London storylines,” Logan said. “We will now be grappling with specific historical and real world political, religious, social and racial issues. In 1938, Los Angeles was facing some hard questions about its future and its soul. Our characters must do the same. There are no easy answers. There are only powerful questions and arresting moral challenges.”

Logan added that “there are no heroes or villains in this world, only protagonists and antagonists; complicated and conflicted characters living on the fulcrum of moral choice.”

Penny Dreadful is executive produced by Logan and Aguilar, along with Sam Mendes and Pippa Harris of Neal Street Productions. Logan's Desert Wolf Productions will produce.