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.

SYNOPSIS:

Nutshell: Buffy meets Frasier meets the A-Team

Comps: Grimm, Angel, Forever Knight, Being Human.

Format: 1-hour, limited, fantasy-mystery (6-8 episodes) with potential to become a regular series, each season having a different case and sub plots.

What is it: A vamp, werewolf, Frankenstein and the Invisible Man walk into a bar…

Well actually, a shrink’s office.

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: The gothic horror genre is enduring: fear, redemption, mystery, the supernatural. It says more about us than the monsters.

Main Characters

Celine Ponce (37): Doctor of Psychiatry. Discovering the underworld while getting her sister out of a vampire cult, she becomes motivated to help real ‘monsters.’ Seeing them as yet another part of society left out, like her sister when the ‘system’ failed her, she helps an underworld in need of psychiatric care.

Sancho Peláez (de Cea) (~35): Born in Spain; vampire since 1100. Suffers from PTSD after the death of his wife and later good friend. Prone to bouts of persecution and regret. When Celine’s targeted, he starts using the vampirism (powers a la Dracula) he swore off long ago.

Tania Wilks (25): A werewolf turned while camping in the Rockies. Attacked and left she harbors a hatred of her own kind and herself for what she’s become. Seeks a ‘cure’ for her condition. Celine and her sessions provide an outlet she cannot find –nor want- with other Lycans.

Pavel (Pasha) Levitsky (30): 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. Celine is his only connection to any semblance of a normal life.

Bryson Fletcher (41): Becoming invisible due to his own experiment amplified his narcissism. This, and feelings of inferiority, make his bipolar tendencies more stark. Yearns for companionship but at times too tactless. A bellicose patient, he respects Celine as a fellow intellectual and connection to a life he no longer has.

Pilot- Psychic ZINA NIKOLAEVA is murdered by a client who then rummages through her apartment. Celine sees Sancho, who vents about faux vamps. She counters it’s a coping mechanism. He leaves to attend Zina’s wake. There, he runs into Pavel, telling him Celine asked about him. He leaves without responding. Tiana runs a self-defense and yoga gym. A friend/pupil asks her out. She declines, knowing the night he suggested would be a full moon. Upon returning to her office, Celine discovers Bryson, who sits invisible. His medical records show he hasn’t refilled his bi-polar meds. Claiming he feels better, she’s not convinced. Zina’s killer, MAXWELL BOOTH (40) and his fellow monster hunters (the Bösejägers) plan their next steps. He sends each out to track down leads. One of them is Celine’s business card.

Season- After violence on their kind, Sancho becomes suspicious. Going to the police is not an option. He enlists Pavel for his intelligence and hacking abilities. Concerned too, Celine suggests using Bryson for his invisibility. Bösejägers set upon Tania and a support group for Lycans. They kill several but with her help fend off the rest. During the melee, Tina discovers one of the Lycans can transform at will. As Sancho and Pavel investigate, she joins them. Their personalities -and mental health issues- nearly break them up on several occasions. They also come across the bias we see in today’s world not as monsters, but humans.

Pavel discovers information on a dead Bösejägers pointing to something more sinister. Through their ad hoc investigation, they come across Rudolph (real name Melvin Smith), a self-proclaimed psychic with knowledge of their underworld. Offering his ‘abilities’ they are doubtful, until one of his ‘visions’ prevents an attack on vampire club inhabited by real and fake ones.

Celine and her husband raise a five-year-old son under modest circumstances. While a loving husband and father, he takes a mind-one's-own-business approach to life. He even refrains from helping a woman of color badgered by a group of racist. Such actions produces marital friction.

While it appears Maxwell’s the mastermind, actually he receives instructions from a Mr. Knight: a shadowy figure claiming to represent a consortium of monster hunters providing funds and weapons. It was he who had Zina killed, believing she would have warned others about them. Posing as a patient, Max discovers Celine knows more than she’s letting on. Knight orders her and family's kidnapping, to draw in and kill the others.

The kidnapping galvanize what Bryson christened their “dreadful little club.” Not to mention the need for the help Celine provides them. While fearful of what she is, Tania seeks how to become a werewolf on demand. Bryson starts taking his meds. Pavel comes out of his shell even if just for the club. Sancho fights his depression with the goal of saving her.

In helping her, they discover not everyone is who they claim to be...

THE DREADFUL CLUB