Ever since 1997's Batman & Robin was sentenced to movie jail for its crimes of high camp, the caped crusader has increasingly courted older superhero fans.
Following directly from Matt Reeves's 2022 reboot The Batman – itself a riff on David Fincher's serial killer procedural Seven – The Penguin takes the form of a gritty, HBO crime drama.
Colin Farrell returns as Oz Cobb, the sneering gangster who fronts the exclusive Iceberg Lounge in Gotham.
In the climax of The Batman, the Riddler offed the fearsome mob boss Carmine Falcone and orchestrated a mass flood to cleanse the crime-ridden metropolis of Gotham.
The series is compelling in this register, but suffers from the common prestige TV compulsion to reshuffle the status quo every couple of episodes.
Batman's grungy 2022 reboot may have impressed as a politically conscious, M-rated tentpole release, but Reeves' vision of Gotham makes a tremulous foundation for an original HBO drama, with more than a passing allusion to TV heavyweights like The Sopranos.
No amount of blood, drugs or coarse language can distract from the thin ice underneath The Penguin's waddling feet.
[Source: ABC News]
