Next week, HBO debuts The Penguin, a spinoff of The Batman centering around Colin Farrell's take on Oswald Cobblepot, the iconic Batman villain better known as the Penguin. Farrell is covered under layers of makeup and prosthetics he apparently hates wearing, but the show is itself is getting high marks from critics. As of this writing, it has a 93% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with 46 reviews counted so far. That could change after the premiere, and it's always hard to predict what the audience score will be, but that's extremely good.
The description "spinoff show about a minor character from a Batman movie" doesn't inspire a ton of confidence, but HBO isn't in the habit of doing sloppy work and I'm glad to hear that it's followed through with The Penguin. Here are some sample reviews:
- London Evening Standard: "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."
- Empire Magazine: "A spin-off that makes this return to Gotham feel both necessary and earned, with excellent performances from Colin Farrell and Cristin Milioti."
- South China Morning Post: "Colin Farrell delivers an extraordinary, transformative performance…the show eschews all the familiar comic-book trappings, and instead emulates the grounded, violent aesthetic of such revered gangster classics as The Sopranos and Scarface."
- The National: "Series creator Lauren LeFranc has made a show here that is easy to recommend, even to those who suffer from even the most extreme cases of superhero fatigue."
- The Mary Sue: "The possibilities are endless and the brilliance of The Penguin makes me itch for more stories like this."
And in the name of balance, here's a negative review from The Hollywood Reporter: "Like entirely too many shows of this type, it treats us to cycles to colorful threats, sadistic torture, predictable betrayals and subsequent body disposals, delivered with professional polish but not enough creativity."
The Penguin reviews
I was curious about the show to begin with, if for no other reason than because HBO is trying its hand at a (kind of) superhero drama; that worked out fairly well for them when they made the Watchmen TV series back in 2019. With reviews like this, I'll definitely check it out.
One note: the episode schedule for this show is very strange. The first episode drops this upcoming Thursday, September 19. And then we won't see a new one for 10 days, until Sunday, September 29. After that, new epiodes come out at a rate of one per week until the eighth and final episode drops on Sunday, November 10.
I don't know why the first episode drops on a Thursday before the show switches to Sundays, but it's happening. Here's the full schedule, which will hopefully minimize confusion:
- Episode 1, "After Hours": Thursday, September 19
- Episode 2, "Inside Man": Sunday, September 29
- Episode 3: Sunday, October 6
- Episode 4: Sunday, October 13
- Episode 5: Sunday, October 20
- Episode 6: Sunday, October 27
- Episode 7: Sunday, November 3
- Episode 8: Sunday, November 10
We also don't know if there will be a second season of The Penguin, although Farrell seems open to it, assuming he can psych himself up to get into all those prosthetics again. Also, if you're wondering, it doesn't sound like Robert Pattinson is going to show up as Batman, at least not in any major capacity.
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