The Penguin is a less pretentious Joker

Doctor Who Fans may recall that following the show’s triumphant return in the early 2000s, we learned that showrunner Russell T. Davies had agreed with BBC executives to strip the franchise of some of its more unwieldy elements, in order to make it palatable to casual viewers .

Gotham City has long been the perfect setting for old-school noir, and the city does it well here

Watch the debut episode of The penguinHBO’s new crime series based on a popular Batman villain, I suspected a similar game was at play. The series may visibly take place in the Batman universe, but it is also very separate from the nerdiness emanating from DC Comics. Think of the film adaptation of jokerjust much less pretentious.

For the uninitiated, the titular Penguin is Oswald Cobb, a hulking and heavyset gangster who rises from a simple enforcer to one of the most powerful villains in Gotham City. If you’re familiar with the comics, you’ll recognize that his name is omitted. It used to be Oswald Cobblepot, but apparently HBO felt that even that risked alienating the norms.

In HBO land, Cobb is played by the excellent Colin Farrell, reprising the role from a recent film Batman movie (for reference, there have been five Batman films in ten years, which is even more than the number of Emily Maitlis/Prince Andrew dramas). True to the comic books, Farrell dons a fat suit for the role — leading to silly debates on TikTok about whether it would have been more progressive to take an overweight lead instead.

He also wears prosthetics. A lot, including a large facial scar and also all kinds of pockmarks and stretch marks. The problem is that since everyone else is fresh-faced and good-looking, it can be very annoying when the camera cuts between Cobb and everyone else, as if you’re watching clips from another show. At one point there is a key scene in a fancy restaurant where Cobb is dining with the daughter of a recently dethroned mob boss. Yet Farrell’s makeup and physiognomy are so strange compared to the other guests that it reminded me of those old comedy shows (Alffor example) where an alien inexplicably lives alongside humans.

If you can get past that, then The penguin is pretty good. Gotham City has long been the perfect setting for old-school noir, and the city does it well here. We also get a bit of world-building, with hints of intriguing side plots – FEMA trucks feeding civilians; a man walking around the subway with a QR code that promises to reveal the true Gotham – making you want to stick around.

As for the main story, the mafia stuff isn’t original, but it’s nicely done. When we first meet Cobb, he’s shuffling around the apartment of his former boss – a recently executed crime lord, Carmine Falcone, who also comes from the old Batman comics. Our hulking antihero senses an opportunity for promotion, but is put in his place by Falcone’s sharp-tongued son (Michael Zegen).

Cobb takes it badly, as comic book villains tend to do, and decides to send Falcone Jnr to reunite with his father. Naturally, the heir apparent’s absence doesn’t go unnoticed, but Cobb devises a cunning plan to lay the blame on a rival gang – showing the first signs of the intelligence that apparently sets him apart from lesser Batman obstacles. such as Kite Man and the Crazy Quilt.

Whether the hooded crusader himself will appear or not is unclear. Maybe he was asked to take the backseat, to keep the casuals on board. If nothing else, showrunner Lauren LeFranc has clearly taken another lesson from the early 2000s Doctor Who: the most important thing is to keep it fun.

This article was originally published in The spectator‘s British magazine. Subscribe to the World Edition here.