10 TV Mistakes You Can’t Unsee
8. Early Guns, Late Medical Expertise - Penny Dreadful
Penny Dreadful was never overly concerned with historical accuracy—after all, being a steamy gothic mystery built around the promise of sex and Victorian violence will do that to a show. Nonetheless the series managed by and large to be a bit more believable than the intentionally anachronistic likes of, for example, 2004’s Van Helsing or 2011’s Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters, a disastrous misfire which diagnoses diabetes a few centuries before the medical establishment caught up.
Speaking of the medical establishment, though, season two’s instalment Verbis Diablo features Sir Malcolm advising a character visiting a cholera sufferer it wear a facemask—despite the fact that this series is set circa 1880, when it was not only accepted science but common knowledge for over thirty years that the disease was contracted from spoiled food rather than fellow sufferers.
Soon in the same episode, the cast make up for their outdated medical views when one of their number wields a Mauser C96 Broomhandle—a gun which wouldn’t become available for purchase until a full five years after the episode was set.