pilot script

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Wife, mother and psychiatrist has four unique clients -a Werewolf, a Frankenstein-ish man, a Vampire, and the Invisible Man- who not only come together to find a killer but help her family threatened by those going after the underworld.​

We take the trope of humanizing monsters, minimize interspecies hanky-panky, make each an allegory for problems we face, and throw in a shrink who’s willing to help them from destroying themselves. We set The Dreadful Club in today’s world where a psychiatrist takes on clients based on classic horror monsters many of us grew up with, each with different issues. All of this in an underworld hidden in plain sight, full of all the creatures that go bump in the night.

The Dreadful Club has supernatural beings investigating a human crime versus humans investigating supernatural ones. It combines a mystery, elements of a thriller, and for levity, old fashion camp.

When a group of hunters start terrorizing them, our club goes from miserable loners to reluctant heroes. More so when the shrink keeping their sanity in one piece is threatened. Each also comes to embrace their peculiar condition that society, and themselves, often shuns.

It also examines the themes of hope in the face of fear, forgiveness when confronting the past, and compassion in a world that knows very little of it.

Tone/Why Now
​The elements of the gothic horror genre are enduring: fear, redemption, mystery, the supernatural. Like good sci fi, it says more about us than the monsters. 
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Comps
Grimm, Angel, Forever Knight, Being Human

Main Characters 
Celine Ponce (36): Graduate cum laude. Doctor of Psychiatry. Having discovered the supernatural underworld when studying vampire cults, she helps real ‘monsters’ in need of psychiatric care. 
Sancho Peláez (de Cea) (~30): Born in Spain and a vampire since 1100. Suffers from PTSD after witnessing the death of his wife and later good friend. Prone to bouts of persecution and regret. He lost religion, but never faith.
Tania Wilks (25): A werewolf turned while backpacking with friends in the Rockies. Attacked and left for dead, she harbors a hatred of her own kind and herself for what she’s become. Seeks a ‘cure’ for her condition.
Pavel (Pasha) Levitsky (35): Product of post-Soviet genetic engineering. Areas around his joints appear reddened and cracked, as though stitched on. Intelligent, techno-savvy but driven to be antisocial and isolated.
Bryson Fletcher (41): Becoming invisible due to his own experiment amplified his narcissism. This, and feelings of inferiority, make his bipolar tendencies more stark. Years for companionship but at times too tactless.​