Two years ago, Colin Farrell’s performance as ugly, pear-shaped Oz “Penguin” Cobb in The Batman had the world raving “Holy shit, that was Colin Farrell?” Americans have a fascination with beautiful actors making themselves look ugly, and future generations will likely look back with disgust at Hollywood’s preference for putting trim folks in fatsuits rather than daring to hire a fat actor. (Hell, you can be disgusted right now, if you’d like.) Still, Farrell’s Penguin was a scene-stealer in The Batman, so it’s no surprise that Warner Bros. Discovery hired him back as the lead of an HBO miniseries, the latest in a decades-long tradition of television series based on Batman characters but featuring little to no Batman.
The Dark Knight is totally absent from The Penguin, and, honestly he isn’t missed for a second. The Penguin is a riveting, stylish, and fun-as-hell gangster drama that makes use of both film and comics source material, but never feels beholden to it, a series for anyone who likes a good crime drama, even or especially if you have no interest in superhero comics.
As the title implies, The Penguin stars Colin Farrell as Oz Cobb, introduced in Matt Reeves’ The Batman as a capo in Gotham City’s Falcone crime family. This was already a dramatic departure from most familiar takes on the character (usually named Oswald Cobblepot), such as the aristocratic crime lord of most comics versions or the tragic sewer monster from Tim Burton’s Batman Returns. Here, Oz is more like Paulie Walnuts, a mid-level mafioso who is tolerated or even enjoyed by his peers, but not taken seriously. He’s got a bum leg and an ugly mug, but while he lacks traditional physical charisma, he’s cunning and persistent. The ending of The Batman left a power vacuum in Gotham, and now his time has come.
As potentially distasteful as his dramatic on-screen transformation may be, Farrell continues to be dynamite as Cobb. Like most of The Penguin’s characters, he seems at first to be a simple mash-up of familiar mob movie tropes, as indicated by his blend of Al Pacino growl and James Gandolfini cadence. He’s a bullied mama’s boy-turned-professional bully—deeply insecure, fundamentally childish, and situationally brilliant. He wants to be loved, but life has taught him that cruelty gets better results than kindness. The components here are nothing new and the twists and secrets revealed about each character over the course of the series may, themselves, be pretty pulpy or outrageous, but together they create a compelling, entertaining, and truly fucked up new whole.
Oz is the main draw, but it could be argued that he’s not even the main character. The Penguin boasts a strong ensemble, beginning with Rhenzy Felix as Vic Aguilar, a sweet teenager who lost everything in the terrorist attack that flooded Gotham’s working class neighborhoods back in The Batman. Through Vic, we get to see a story play out that we might infer was also Oz’s story, how tragic circumstances can lead a kind-hearted kid to find purpose and prosperity in a world of vice and murder. Rhenzy Felix’s quiet charm makes Vic the sort of character a viewer wants to protect, and he’s a standout even in an ensemble that features Clancy Brown, Deirdre O’Connell, and Shohreh Aghdashloo.
But The Penguin’s true lead isn’t Farrell or Felix but Cristin Milioti. Milioti portrays Sofia Falcone, daughter of late Falcone patriarch Carmine, who has spent the past ten years in Arkham State Hospital under suspicion of being a serial killer. Now, legally exonerated, she’s come back for her own piece of the family business, but she’s already the unquestioned Boss Of This Show. Milioti is in command from the moment she steps into frame as the quiet, still, fragile, yet iron-willed Sofia. This is the kind of terrifying yet sympathetic monster every actor dreams of playing, and Milioti crushes it. (I do not believe I have ever used the phrase “tour de force” before in my writing career, but I’ll use it now.) Between the performance itself and her parade of devastating looks, Cristin Milotti as Sofia Falcone should be social media’s next obsession. At the very least, in short order, she has become a Top 10 live-action Batman character.
Its connection to the world of Batman comics grants The Penguin a certain license to be stylized and hyperbolic, but showrunner Lauren LeFranc and company avail themselves of it very selectively. There are hour-long stretches in which nothing obviously “Batman”-like happens. It’s simply a fun crime story set in a fictional city where gangsters peddle fictional drugs, and which occasionally and unobtrusively drops the names of obscure characters or landmarks from an 85-year multimedia history. It’s a testament to the malleability of the Gotham mythos that this general lack of identifiable Bat-symbols doesn’t make it feel anti-Batman. Like Reeves’ The Batman, there’s nothing about The Penguin that indicates embarrassment in its comic book origins, merely a preference for the more grounded, noir-influenced stories by creative teams like Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale or Ed Brubaker, Michael Lark, and Greg Rucka.
While it definitely benefits from its comics and cinematic roots, The Penguin is a story that could probably have been told outside of Gotham City. But, if we’re being honest, without its connection to a blockbuster multimedia franchise, it probably would not exist. As it stands, some audiences who would be unlikely to tune in for an excellent original crime drama will be giving The Penguin their attention. For once, I say “Thank god for blind brand loyalty.”
The first episode of ‘The Penguin’ debuts on Max on September 19th.