No one ever said that the problem with a Batman movie was too much Batman, and yet artists have repeatedly tried to create Gotham City-related film and TV projects without him, be it Gotham, Gotham Knights, Birds of Prey, Pennyworth, Batwoman, or Joker and its upcoming sequel. To that mix, one can now add The Penguin, an eight-part HBO series that takes place in (and shortly after the events of) Matt Reeves’ The Batman, detailing the efforts of its title character to seize control of the metropolis’ underworld in the wake of The Riddler’s reign of terror.
Unsurprisingly, the Dark Knight’s absence looms large over these gloomy and ruthless proceedings. However, thanks to an outright phenomenal lead performance by Colin Farrell as the iconic villain, it proves as engrossing and exciting as a Batman-adjacent show could hope to be.
As in Reeves’ 2022 blockbuster, Farrell plays Oswald “Oz” Cobb under some of the most convincing make-up in movie/TV history, so thoroughly transformed into a balding, scarred, gold-toothed, leg brace-limping criminal that the dashing actor completely disappears into the role. With a New Yawk-y accent and an outwardly deferential demeanor that masks his deadly cunning, Oz is a mid-level gangster who resents being looked down upon and, in response, uses others’ low opinion of him to his advantage.
Farrell has never been better than he is in this small-screen saga, imagining Oz as a cross between Joe Pesci’s Goodfellas psycho Tommy DeVito and James Gandolfini’s The Sopranos patriarch, equal parts unhinged, aggrieved, and ambitious. The latter character’s influence is additionally felt in Oz’s tangled, unhealthy relationship with his dementia-addled mother Francis (Deirdre O'Connell), whose love and admiration he craves, and whom he hides away from his enemies, promising her a future of penthouse wealth and luxury.
Cristin Milioti and Colin Farrell
HBODespite the fact that a menacing vigilante who dresses as a bat just thwarted a maniac who flooded Gotham (killing scores of the less fortunate), Batman is unseen and only mentioned once in The Penguin—a glaring omission given that hoods such as Oz would undoubtedly be at least somewhat concerned about his ominous presence and the threat it poses to their illicit businesses.
Still, Lauren LeFranc’s series overcomes that obstacle by concocting a gripping tale of gangland scheming and warfare, all of it revolving around Oz, who gets himself into trouble when, upon visiting the office of deceased kingpin Carmine Falcone to steal jewels and incriminating evidence on politicians and associates, he runs into Carmine’s son and heir apparent, Alberto (Michael Zegen).
Oz attempts to sweet talk his way out of his sticky predicament, but when he’s mocked as a “little bitch” for dreaming of being revered like the gangsters he grew up around, he snaps and guns the young man down.
On his way out to dispose of Alberto’s corpse, Oz catches a group of kids stealing the hubcaps from his swanky purple Maserati. He catches one of them, Vic (Rhenzy Feliz), and makes the stuttering teenager his accomplice and new driver. Over the course of The Penguin, they develop a surrogate father-son bond predicated on their similar upbringing in the slums of Crown Point and their attendant anger at being ignored by Gotham’s rich and powerful.
Class resentment is rife throughout these proceedings and, especially, in Oz, who maniacally wants respect, seethes with hatred at anyone who thinks him lesser, and cannily exploits others’ comparable rage in order to attain their loyalty and convince them to do his bidding.
Before offing Alberto, Oz learns about a game-changing new narcotic, and he strives to sell this “revolutionary” drug deal to his superiors. Problem is, Alberto was in league with his sister Sofia (Cristin Milioti), and she’s now been released from Arkham Asylum and suspects that Oz is up to no good. Dubbed “The Hangman” for murdering seven prostitutes, Sofia is the deranged fly in Oz’s ointment.
No matter how much he works to deceive her, she’s a formidable adversary in The Penguin, whose story soon positions its protagonist as a de facto Yojimbo, trying to play both Sofia and her rival, imprisoned don Salvatore Maroni (Clancy Brown), to his advantage. This turns out to be a tricky endeavor, albeit one that Oz handles with enough aplomb to routinely keep himself from perishing by bullet, strangulation, or explosion—threats that lurk around every one of the city’s grimy corners.
Like its big-screen predecessor, The Penguin—directed by Craig Zobel (Mare of Easttown, The Hunt)—is darker than dark, its action encased in a red-tinged shroud of rain, shadows, and damp filth and decay. That mood is apt for a story about Farrell’s monstrously conniving baddie, whose three-dimensionality (bitter and optimistic, formidable and inspiring, sincere and untrustworthy) makes him a transfixing center of attention, and whose plot to take over Gotham puts him at direct odds with the fearsome Sofia.
LeFranc bestows her comic-book characters with a wealth of formative traumas and hang-ups related to their upbringing and their families. In doing so, she slyly reconceives of the Penguin in decidedly Batman-esque terms—complete with a secret subterranean lair that was once his figurative birthplace.
Clancy Brown and Colin Farrell
HBOIn its closing moments, The Penguin sets the scene for the next Caped Crusader saga, but what’s most impressive about the series is that it stands on its own as a self-contained portrait of its scoundrel’s rise to power. LeFranc stays true to Reeves’ template (including with some not-always-successful pop and rock music cues) and her cast is excellent, in particular Milioti as the wronged, ferocious Sofia and Feliz as the stammering, earnest Vic.
Considering the mercilessness of this milieu (as well as the fact that there won’t be room for all these characters in The Batman 2), not everyone is destined to survive the war initiated by Oz. That state of affairs lends the material an edgy unease that’s augmented by its oppressive aesthetics and the snarling, sneering, calculating conduct of Farrell’s great and terrible Oz.
Uniquely reinventing its waddling “gentleman of crime” just as its characters seek to remake themselves by fighting back against the forces conspiring to keep them down, the show reconfirms the menacing allure of Reeves’ DC vision. Moreover, it suggests that if the director were wise, he’d forget the rest of Batman’s rogue’s gallery of villains and pivot his upcoming film sequel around the Penguin.
