Showtime places season 2 premiere of ‘Penny Dreadful’ online (video)

Curious to find out what is going to transpire on the second-season premiere of “Penny Dreadful”? Well, the cool news that we have for you today is that Showtime is not even making you wait until Sunday, May 3 in order to check out the first episode of the Josh Hartnett – Eva Green series!

If you look at the video, you can check out the entire second-season premiere … with one important exception in that this is a heavily-censored version of the episode. (It has to be in order for it to stay on YouTube.) If you want to see the uncensored version, then you are going to have to wait until the show actually airs. Still, this is certainly better than nothing for fans that just cannot wait.

One of the reasons that Showtime tends to do this with many of their shows is simple: They want to increase subscribers. The hope here is that if they give away the premiere episode for free, there may be enough interested parties who want to subscribe and get the rest of the season. While there is no quantitative data to back up this hypothesis, the fact that they keep doing this should serve as some proof that this does in fact work to a certain extent.

Admittedly, “Penny Dreadful” is one of those shows we are surprised is not more popular than it is. It has many things that will appeal to a horror audience, and it certainly makes a lot more sense the majority of the time than a show like “American Horror Story,” which has bonafide smash hit status, but is often lost in too many storylines at once.

What do you think about this promo, and is there anything in particular that you are hoping to see on the second season? Share with a comment.