‘The Penguin’ Brilliantly Applies the Quality TV Format to Comic-Book Material

Comic-book entertainment meets quality television in ‘The Penguin,’ Matt Reeves’s surprisingly successful origin story of one of Batman’s most iconic villains, now streaming on Max. In Reeves’s vision, The Penguin, played by Colin Farrell under an unrecognizable latex costume and in a hairy fat suit, is a mid-level mob lackey inciting a family gang war that will engulf all of Gotham. He resembles, physically and vocally, a gnarled, scarred Tony Soprano, and there are elements of Breaking Bad in his relationship with his unwitting underling, a cute but troubled young man named Victor. The Batman universe, by definition, is based in noir. But ‘The Penguin’ breaks the formula, crafting something akin to The Godfather for the DC Cinematic Universe.

Farrell’s Penguin is closer to a wisecracking Travis Bickle than the slimy monster that Danny DeVito played in ‘Batman Returns’ or the “nyuk yuk yuk yuk” cartoon Penguin that Burgess Meredith played in our youth. When he rides the subway and someone walks by dressed like The Riddler from ‘The Batman‘ movie that served as this show’s prequel, Farrell looks at him disdainfully and says “get da fuck outta here.” Those are the kinds of funny details that keep this show from feeling too dark. The Penguin yells at Vic to take the cilantro off his tacos. He talks to him about the magic of mixing slushie flavors. He’s a relatable weirdo who also happens to be Gotham’s sleaziest, most manipulative drug lord.

Farrell gives a remarkable performance. He’s nuanced, bizarre, and creepily funny. But he has his match in Cristin Milioti, who the show mercifully allows to look like herself. Sofia plays Sofia Falcone, daughter of slain mob boss Carmine Falcone. She’s also a psychotic serial killer known as The Hangman, recently rehabilitated and released from Arkham Asylum. Sofia is twitchy and insane, driven mad by grief and the desire to avenge the deaths of her father and also her brother, who The Penguin murders in an astonishing opening scene. He somehow manages to weasel out of it, but you get the sense that Sofia is going to figure out what “Oz” is up to, and that they’re going to have some sort of massive reckoning.  Milioti is an incredibly gifted actor, more than Farrell’s equal, and she holds the screen and then some when he’s absent.

Though there are plenty of other good performances in The Penguin, including Mark Kelly as a mob underling, Farrell and Milioti are both doing career-defining work in The Penguin. And Matt Reeves is pulling off some remarkable Batman-world building in the show. It’s the most realistic, least-cartoony Gotham ever put to screen, an Elseworlds New York City struggling with drug addiction and the aftermath of a terrorist attack (from the movie) that left a good portion of the city underwater. Apparently, The Batman is on holiday while The Penguin manipulates his way to the top of the Gotham underworld. The plot is twisty and intricate, and the individual pieces of dialogue often avoid cliché. Nothing about The Penguin is boring. Farrell drives a wicked purple Maserati. There are some great car cashes, gun battles, and shankings. It’s fun for the whole family, 16 and up.

The Penguin is not The Sopranos or Breaking Bad. In the end, it’s still based on comic-book IP, and can’t quite escape its origins. But if you missed the days when good TV had plenty of action and intrigue and profanity and also the arc of a Shakespearian tragedy, it brilliantly applies the formula to its comic-book roots. All that’s missing is an exploding umbrella, but maybe they’ll find a way to work that into the mix.