10 Greatest Horror TV Shows Since 2000

6. Penny Dreadful

Run: 3 seasons, 2014-2016

Starring: Eva Green, Josh Hartnett, Timothy Dalton, Patti LuPone

Network: Showtime

Set like a small-screen League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, John Logan's show was a smorgasbord of gothic horror from across the ages. Frankenstein's monster, Dracula, Dorian Grey: Penny Dreadful had them all, and was a librarian's wet dream.

Focusing on the possessed Vanessa Ives (Eva Green), and a group of misfit horror stereotypes battling evil, Penny Dreadful was as much about Ives's relationship with Timonthy Dalton's Sir Malcolm Murray than it was about horror.

A fully fleshed out cast, Dreadful was as heart-breaking as it was horrifying. While some say it was cut short, the final season wrapped with Logan saying the story he had to tell had been told:

"Some poems are meant to be haikus and some are meant to be sonnets and some are meant to be enormous epics, and this was always meant to be a sonnet. It was something of grace and beauty. I think we’ve been able to achieve that in a really masterful way with the artists that I work with, everyone’s work."

Over the years there have been so many incarnations of the horror tropes, but few did it as devilishly darkly as Penny Dreadful.