“He laughed at me,” Oswald Cobb tells his mother, when she quizzes him about the cause of his latest act of violence.
This Penguin – for Oz is the latest incarnation of the Batman adversary – has a direct link to Danny DeVito’s Penguin/Oswald Cobblepot in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns; the deformed outcast who wants to take his abject status out on the rest of the world.
Yet while Burton’s goth cartoon vision limited his Penguin to a hard-done-by circus freak, what we have here in HBO’s new big-budget series is a far richer character study, driven by a world-beating ‘give him the Emmy now’ performance by Colin Farrell.
The Penguin is a limited series sequel to Matt Reeves’ The Batman – set in the waterlogged, utterly filthy Gotham following the aftermath of that film’s climax – and apparently will act as a bridge to The Batman 2.
Reeves acts as executive producer here, with Lauren LeFranc as showrunner, but this is very much an extension of the world established in The Batman. While this world has something of the Seventies New York scuzz of Todd Phillips’ The Joker films – which are of course set in an entirely separate world to Reeves’ one marked by masturbatory acting and plodding self-indulgence – really it has 1930s Warner Brothers gangster films as its inspiration.
This is classic noir. Set against a backdrop of a collapsing and corrupt city, mobsters scheme and plot and kill and lie as they aim to rule the city. While The Batman had Robert Pattinson’s young caped crusader discovering his identity and honing his detective skills in this crime-rife world, The Penguin is firmly focused on the gangsters. It is the original Paul Muni 1932 Scarface writ large, and similarly hinged on a lead character aiming to rise from low-life to the high life.
There is a shocking grit here that is a world away from Burton’s Penguin (strange how Christopher Nolan ignored the character altogether, when you see him rendered with such conviction here).
So while Farrell’s Penguin is deformed, it is presented very realistically, with Farrell unrecognisable beneath a pockmarked and scarred face, bearing the pain of a club foot that requires a brace, and which gives him a waddle as he walks – hence the nickname.
His grotesque appearance play to his advantage, either when he’s threatening people with violence, or playing dumb to cover his whip-smart mind. This is the Penguin as Richard III, fuelled by personal discontent but driven by a lust for power that lends him the charisma to control events. The world takes one look and underestimates him, while he uses people like chess pieces.
We meet Oz in the aftermath of the death of his boss Carmine Falcone (played by John Turturro in the film). With Falcone dead, the power gap needs to be filled by his son Alberto… or someone else, as the various crime families jockey for position over control of the ‘drops’ industry, the drug that Gotham’s underclass are hooked on.
When Alberto disappears, his sister Sofia (Cristin Milioti who manages to meet Farrell’s performance levels), fresh out of Arkham Asylum, thinks Oz has something to do with his disappearance and the two engage in a battle of wits as the gang war begins.
There’s a brilliant scene in episode one with the two of them at dinner, where we see Oz twist his story to cover the holes that Sofia identifies, marking the show as firmly about who’s smartest, more than who’s the most violent (though both score big on that front too).
The series is far too dense with twists and turns to write about in detail without spoilers, but this is a five star series that mafia film fans will adore. It’s very much an Italian-American gangster Penguin, with Farrell finding the sweetest of evil spots between Tony Soprano and De Niro’s Vito Corleone.
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One of the show’s masterstrokes, is bringing in Rhenzy Felix as Victor Aguilar, a teenager who Penguin takes under his wing, and shares a more vulnerable and damaged side as he takes the kid home to meet his mother (Dierdre O’Connell).
As in The Sopranos, the mother may just be key to the complicated personality of her gangster son. Victor hears her saying to Oz: “Are you a weak little pussy boy? This city is meant to be yours, sweetheart. What are you going to do to get it?”
Batman? Who need him.
