As a follows up to Matt Reeve’s The Batman, The Penguin delivers in every way, innovating on the foundations set and showing off the story of a true villain.

Being both a comic-book show and gritty crime drama, The Penguin walks the balance between both genres perfectly. Unlike a lot of other comic-book shows released this year, the tone and story telling of The Penguin is entirely unique for the genre, but it’s not an entirely original idea.

From the opening moments of the show it’s clear that The Penguin takes heavy inspiration from The Sopranos. After all, both stories are about criminals attempting to sieze power and make their way in their crime ridden cities.

The similarities don’t make The Penguin any less of a great show, if anything it helps the show stand out and reach its target audience. If shows about the lives of criminals aren’t your thing, The Penguin most likely won’t win you over, but for fans of the genre and fans of The Batman, it’s well worth a watch.

“America’s a hustle”

Image credit: Warner Brothers Discovery

Set just after the events of The Batman, Gotham is in ruins, crime is on the rise and every crime family is attempting to assert their control over the city due to the power vacuum left after the death of Carmine Falcone.

Mobster Oswald ‘Oz’ Cobb (Colin Farrell) finds himself in a turbulent series of events after the murder of an important crime lord, this one event sparks the story of Oz’s bloody rise to power, and all the terrible things he does to get there.

It can’t be understated how dark some of Oz’s actions are, at no point is he painted as the hero of the story, he is a dangerous man that will do anything to take power from others.

However, Oz is only one of the protagonists of the show since the show is technically about two people, the other person being Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), daughter of Carmine Falcone.

Oz and Sofia clash at multiple points of the story, both striving for the same thing, absolute power over Gotham’s criminal empire. Their shared history is given the spotlight in the best episode of the show, episode four Cent’anni, an episode the focusses entirely on Sofia’s past and what led to her being known as ‘The Hangman’.

Cristin Milioti and Colin Farrell’s performances are a major highlight of the show, every moment the show spends exploring the complex minds of Sofia and Oz is time well spent.

“The world ain’t set up for honest men to succeed”

Image credit: Warner Brothers Discovery

Fundamentally The Penguin is a show about families and generational trauma. Both Oz and Sofia come from families that were torn apart in different ways, and both have to find a way to start a new family.

Sofia seeks to change what the Falcone family is able to do and open them up to new opportunities, where as Oz finds family in a young man named Victor Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz).Oz and Vic form an unlikely bond, relying on each other to reach the ultimate goal of over throwing the families.

The relationships of the characters is what elevates The Penguin from being a good crime show, to a perfect character study. Oz and Vic are fascinating to watch interact with each other, both growing closer to one another and becoming something they weren’t at the beginning. For Vic, he gains confidence and the ability to deal with his past trauma, but Oz learns that to get to the top, sacrafices have to be made.

Colin Farrell’s transformation into Oz is breathtaking, he’s almost completely lost inside of the fat suit and prosthetics that took three hours to apply each time. His performance is up there with Heath Ledger as The Joker in The Dark Knight.

“It wasn’t for nothing”

Image credit: Warner Brothers Discovery

The Penguin is unlike any other comic-book show, it abandons conventions and goes out of its way to tell a dark story of a criminals rise to power. It may not be original, if you’ve seen Scarface it’s pretty similar, but for the world of Batman it’s something new and exciting.

Colin Farrell will likely go down as giving the definitive take on the character, just as Robert Pattinson and Heath Ledger had done for Batman and the Joker respectively

With only eight episodes totaling just under eight hours, The Penguin is a perfect weekend binge that’ll have you on the edge of your seat and praying for The Batman Part 2 to come out sooner.

Featured image credit: Warner Brothers Discovery