Like The Joker, but less pretentious: The Penguin reviewed

Doctor Who fans may remember that after the show’s triumphant return in the early 2000s, we found out that showrunner Russell T. Davies had agreed with BBC mandarins to rid the franchise of some of its more unwieldy elements in order to make it palatable to casual viewers.

Watching the debut episode of The Penguin, HBO’s new crime series (available on Sky Atlantic), based on a popular Batman villain, I suspected a similar game was at play. The series might be visibly set in the Batman universe, but it’s also very much detached from the nerdiness that emanates from DC Comics. Think the film adaptation of The Joker, only much less pretentious.

For the uninitiated, the titular Penguin is Oswald Cobb, a lumbering and heavy-set mobster who goes from lowly enforcer to becoming one of the most powerful villains in Gotham City. If you’re familiar with the comics, you’ll recognise his name has been trimmed. It used to be Oswald Cobblepot, but evidently HBO felt that even that was risking alienating the normies.

In HBO-land, Cobb is played by the excellent Colin Farrell, reprising the role from a recent Batman film (for reference, there have been five Batman films in ten years, which is even more than the number of Emily Maitlis/Prince Andrew dramas). True to the comic books, Farrell dons a fat suit for the role – leading to silly debates on TikTok as to whether it would have been more progressive to cast an overweight lead instead.

He also wears prosthetics. An awful lot of them, including a large facial scar and all sorts of pockmarks and welts too. The problem is that given everyone else is fresh-faced and good-looking it can be very discombobulating when the camera cuts between Cobb and all the others, as if you’re watching snippets of a different programme.