While it may be a bit ironic, this is a compliment to the new crime drama. Penguin (premiering on HBO on September 19) that it hardly feels like an offshoot of the series. The film is a spin-off of Matt Reeves2022 movies Batmananother reimagining of Gotham City and its various heroes and villains. But except for a few references here and there, Penguin—from the creator Lauren LeFranc—is essentially a completely separate story, a compelling and satisfying underworld tale with a semi-righteous political plot at its center.
The protagonist is not a fat, box-playing man named Oswald Cobblepot, as he was in the Batman universe. He is now Oz Cobb, a shambling, rude, and ruthless golem trying to climb the Gotham criminal hierarchy. He is shown, as in Batmanby a heavily made-up person Colin FarrellA powerful physical transformation is complemented by Farrell’s more similar vocal and postural changes. It’s a big, engaging performance, mesmerizing both in its broad gestures and its careful detail.
Oz may be a psychopath, but he’s capable of old-fashioned neighborhood charm. He’ll beat up a politician and help him out of a tight parking space. He’ll come close to killing a meddlesome street kid, Victor (Rhenzy Feliz), but at the last minute decides to protect him, acting as if the sudden disappearance of a deadly threat is really no big deal. Time and again, we see his ruthless meanness painted with the grace of a normal man, either a calculated strategy or a representation of a real conflict between morality and a screaming void.
To further complicate the portrait, there is the matter of Oz’s mother, Francis (the great Deirdre O’Connell), an old battleaxe to whom Oz is deeply devoted. She may be the last thing that truly ties Oz to the world of decency, though their relationship is far from pleasant—as has been explained thoroughly, perhaps as fully as Penguin‘s put on.
The series is a mishmash of storylines. At first it seems like Victor’s protégé will take center stage, but then he fades into the background so Oz can deal with his mother issues. And so a formidable villain can emerge: Sophia Falcone, the illegitimate daughter of a mafia family recently released from Arkham Asylum, is Cristin Milioti. She, like Oz, is a villain with complex emotional nuances. Sophia has been treated badly in her life, but has chosen to deal with all that pain by doubling down on her family’s cruelty.
Sophia and Oz are vying for control in a Gotham devastated by the events of Batman. The film’s climactic flood has destroyed a struggling neighborhood, and a drug war is raging on multiple fronts. There’s opportunity in that chaos, which Oz hopes to exploit. He and Sophia both adopt a populist platform in an effort to rally gangs to their cause. Penguin imagines a kind of criminal proletariat, rising up to reclaim their autonomy from the mafia bosses. It’s a clever trick, a rousing allusion to real-world debate cloaked in gangster prose.
Penguin is a smart show, deftly balancing brutal violence with drama, social commentary with biting humor. Its weakness lies in its ambition to tell too many stories at once. Characters either get lost in that narrative thicket, or are forced to change direction in the blink of an eye. One longs for a more solid, focused arc for the season, one that would have made the season’s bleak finale all the more satisfying. So much of the plot is burned away in eight episodes; one wonders where the show might have gone next, had Farrell agreed to embark on the arduous journey with a prosthetic leg for another tour of duty.
While it was certainly a challenge, one hopes Farrell would agree to go through it all again. He gives an endlessly engaging performance, well-paired by his co-stars—especially O’Connell, Milioti, and a Carmen Ejogo as Oz’s girlfriend. They all come to life in the show’s version of Gotham, a swamp of tribes and cultures struggling to survive amid the chaos of it all.
The series could almost certainly thrive on its own, without the IP lore that built it in the first place. It doesn’t have the same synergistic weight that has weighed on the Marvel shows that have cluttered Disney+ for the past four years. This is where DC finally finds its perhaps accidental advantage: the scattered mythology, its countless stops and starts and reinventions, has created spaces where creative thinking can creep in. If Penguin Had it been tightly acted in service of a larger story, I doubt it would have had as much punch and personality. Maybe that’s Penguin’s dream come true: from chaos comes order.
