Penny dreadful
Literary genreWikipedia
39
MENTIONS
14
EPISODES
13
PODCASTS
Search complete. 39 mentions across 14 episodes found for "Penny dreadful".
Sep 9, 2026
Mavra KenzieHOST
Fantastic.
Mavra KenzieHOST
So when we last left our intrepid, uh, Penny Dreadfuls, or the Dreadfuls as they're known at the club, uh, they had just investigated the, uh, remains of Agnes Potter, um, a maid who's been brutally murdered, perhaps by the return of Edward Hyde, who knows, and they were setting off to investigate in another direction.
Mavra KenzieHOST
So you were headed off to, uh, Dr. Jekyll's cabinet.
Mavra KenzieHOST
So you make your way, uh, using Warren's carriage, which is a very convenient thing to have, especially in the cold.
Daisy EganHOST
Police were quick to point out that the flames could have been produced by blowing a flammable substance through a straw at the flame of the lamp, and were probably not the result of a fire-breathing monster.
Daisy EganHOST
But the police, what with their cool-headed facts, were a poor match against the popular penny dreadfuls of the day, which were basically the Victorian version of the National Enquirer, printing lurid tales of crime and horror.
Daisy EganHOST
At the hands of the imaginative writers of the Penny Dreadfuls, basically writing the equivalent of clickbait pieces, Spring-Heeled Jack became a kind of supervillain who could leap over entire buildings, sometimes fly, with glowing red eyes and the ability to breathe blue flames.
Daisy EganHOST
And, most likely because of the popularity of the Penny Dreadfuls, a bunch of copycat attacks sprang up all over London in 1838.
Daisy EganHOST
The most common target of these copycat assaults were women.
Daisy EganHOST
One man walked into a pub and told the landlady he was Spring-Heeled Jack and swung a club at her.
Elizabeth KlettNARRATOR
these things are our luxuries and with a hypocrisy so ludicrous as to be almost unparalleled in history we rate the gutter boys for their immorality at the very time that we are discussing with equivocal german professors whether morality is valid at all.
Elizabeth KlettNARRATOR
At the very instant that we curse Penny Dreadful for encouraging thefts upon property, we canvas the proposition that all property is theft.
Elizabeth KlettNARRATOR
At the very instant we accuse it, quite unjustly, of lubricity and indecency, we are cheerfully reading philosophies which glory in lubricity and indecency.
Elizabeth KlettNARRATOR
At the very instant that we charge it, With encouraging the young to destroy life, we are placidly discussing
Elizabeth KlettNARRATOR
This should be our great comfort.
Elizabeth KlettNARRATOR
The vast mass of humanity, with their vast mass of idle books and idle words, have never doubted and never will doubt that courage is splendid that fidelity is noble that distressed ladies should be rescued and vanquished enemies spared there are a large number of cultivated persons who doubt these maxims of daily life just as there are a large number of persons who believe they are the prince of wales and I am told that both classes of people are entertaining conversationalists.
Elizabeth KlettNARRATOR
But the average man or boy writes daily in these great gaudy diaries of his soul which we call penny dreadfuls,
BluffADVERTISER
a plainer
TL WebbHOST
It does, it does.
TL WebbHOST
We'll get to Penny Dreadful, where she becomes the nanny for a vampire's human children.
TL WebbHOST
Gross and weird.
TL WebbHOST
Yes.
James LileksHOST
Yeah.
James LileksHOST
Is it any better than the Penny Dreadfuls or the pulp slop? I'm not sure.
James LileksHOST
It may get better.
James LileksHOST
There are people like Charles who occasionally will resort to AI-generated music, which itself has just hoovered up everything that has already been done and now is spitting it back to us in a recognizable form.
James LileksHOST
Yeah.
James LileksHOST
Is it any better than the Penny Dreadfuls or the pulp slop? I'm not sure.
James LileksHOST
It may get better.
James LileksHOST
There are people like Charles who occasionally will resort to AI-generated music, which itself has just hoovered up everything that has already been done and now is spitting it back to us in a recognizable form.
Peter BoghossianHOST
Maybe I started it, that I'm a victim of my own brain and stuff.
Peter BoghossianHOST
But isn't Romanticy just the modern iteration of Penny Dreadful? And what makes it uniquely bad? I mean, why is that uniquely bad as opposed to the modern version of the escape fiction?
Liza LibesGUEST
Yeah, I mean, so I think the issue is not that it's escape fiction.
Liza LibesGUEST
The issue is that it's just... to the point of not even resembling anything literary.
Kate YaxleyGUEST
You can't see it, but I'm eyeing him.
Christian GillettGUEST
Well, Sweeney Todd is based on a Penny Dreadful story, which was almost like kind of like the 1800s version of like Pulp Fiction novels that they would publish.
Christian GillettGUEST
And it was this sort of story about this murderous barber who would kill his clients.
Christian GillettGUEST
And then Mrs. Lovett, who had a pie shop down below, would bake them into pies.
Christian GillettGUEST
It's hysterical.
Christian GillettGUEST
It's amazing.
Christian GillettGUEST
But that was the end of the Penny Dreadful.
Christian GillettGUEST
There was no real kind of exploration of trying to make this a human thing.
Joe GettyHOST
Anyway...
Joe GettyHOST
It used to be that that sort of kind of base, prurient, whatever word you want to use, like horror, porn stuff, was relegated to what in England, and it's a delightful name, but they would call the Penny Dreadfuls.
Joe GettyHOST
The very tabloidy tales of death and crime and sex.
Joe GettyHOST
And the rest of it.
Joe GettyHOST
And a respectable person from, you know, even like your middle class up would never be caught dead with one in their hand because it's just – it's terrible.
Joe GettyHOST
It's embarrassing to be a fan of the penny dreadfuls.
Joe GettyHOST
That's for the lower classes.
Joe GettyHOST
Oh, interesting.
Joe GettyHOST
That's too much, unless you're an investor and wholesaler.
Joe GettyHOST
Anyway, it used to be that that sort of kind of base, prurient, whatever word you want to use, like horror, porn stuff, was relegated to what in England, and it's a delightful name, but they would call the Penny Dreadfuls, the very tabloidy tales of death and crime and sex.
Joe GettyHOST
And the rest of it.
Joe GettyHOST
And a respectable person from, you know, even like your middle class up would never be caught dead with one in their hand because it's just – it's terrible.
Joe GettyHOST
It's embarrassing to be a fan of the penny dreadfuls.
Joe GettyHOST
That's for the lower classes.
Joe GettyHOST
Oh, interesting.
4 more episodes mention Penny dreadful.
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