The Penguin review: Colin Farrell Batman spin-off channels The Sopranos to mixed results

In the pantheon of comic-book villains, only the Joker, Lex Luthor and Magneto are more instantly recognisable than The Penguin. The waddling low-level goon turned gangland supremo, and Batman antagonist, cuts a striking silhouette. But the latest depiction, by Irish heartthrob Colin Farrell in Matt Reeves’s 2022 blockbuster The Batman, took the character in a different direction. Less silly, more scary. It’s a role that Farrell reprises, now, in Sky Atlantic’s new thriller, The Penguin.

Gotham, a city famous for its disorder, is in even more disarray. Poverty is rife and crime is on the rise, and while, for some, this is a living nightmare, for others it’s an opportunity. Among them is Oswald “Oz” Cobb (Farrell), known by his pejorative nickname, The Penguin. After the assassination of mob boss Carmine Falcone (something that, apparently, happened in The Batman), a power vacuum has opened up. It’s a situation that Oz, Falcone’s former chief lieutenant, throws dynamite into when he impulsively murders Falcone’s son and heir Alberto (Michael Zegen). What Oz didn’t count on, however, was Alberto’s little sister Sofia (Cristin Milioti) being released from Arkham Asylum, where she had been serving time for a spot of serial killing. Now she’s out, seeking both answers and revenge.

“The last thing we need is a goddamn gang war!” proclaims Johnny Vitti (Michael Kelly), the underboss of the Falcone dynasty. And yet, that’s what they get. The Falcone clan vs the Maronis, their upstart rivals, with Oz in the middle, playing both sides. This is a world in which caped vigilantes are refreshingly absent – just criminal activities, unmolested by masked moralisers. But what is familiar is the dynamics of power. It’s a set-up that walks in the footsteps of televisual classics such as The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire, naturally, but also evokes Succession (which Falcone child will come out on top? Or will the unheralded outsider scoop the gig?) and House of Cards. That’s an awful lot of prestige to shove into the Batman universe.

The trick of a show like The Sopranos was to set proceedings in the unfamiliar world of New Jersey mobsters but make the interpersonal and emotional drama intensely familiar. Unhappy families, alike in their unhappiness (as Tolstoy didn’t quite say). The Penguin has to pull off a double trick. Firstly, it has to smuggle influences from TV’s Golden Age into a comic book narrative, and then it has to sneak some human poignancy into that mix. It’s a Matryoshka doll of narrative planning, and, like those carved icons, the more layers you have, the smaller the final doll. And that’s an issue for The Penguin: by the time we reach any psychological resonance, it’s buried under a bunch of supervillain guff and lashings of Godfather riffs. “I’m gonna run this city,” Pingu declares, slurping a slushie, a bodega Bugsy Siegel.

Of course, most people won’t be watching The Penguin as anything more than a Batman spin-off. In this sense, it’s more akin to Todd Phillips’s Joker than the rest of the caped crusader’s world. Farrell’s Penguin is very human: flawed but ambitious, unappealing but confident. The Oscar-nominated actor gives what I suspect is a good performance, but he’s unrecognisable, caked under layers of prosthetics and a fat suit. Farrell is a leading man, with leading man good looks. I don’t quite understand the logic of hiring and then hiding him, rather than just casting someone a better physical match for the character. It feels like he’s taking food out of the mouths of Paul Giamatti’s children. Milioti, meanwhile, is a great TV actor: she nails Sofia’s mad eyes, but the character feels broader than the rest of the gangsters. Yet, as a duo, there is some balance. “People underestimate you,” Sofia tells Oz. “But not me. I’ve always known you were capable of more.”

The vision that showrunner Lauren LeFranc has extracted from Matt Reeves’s The Batman is more grown-up than Bruno Heller’s Gotham, which covered similar territory on Channel 5. You just need to look at the emo character design of Robin Lord Taylor’s Penguin to appreciate that. The Penguin offers a different vision – different too to Danny DeVito’s seminal performance – and one that will appeal to comic book aficionados who prefer the grime of Gotham to the multicoloured Marvel miasma. But the inmates of Arkham aren’t the only ones who are straightjacketed. Comic book adaptations cannot truly serve both their native audience and televisual snobs. For better or worse, they always default to their home camp, and The Penguin is no different.