The story of what happened before Batman began…
You’re probably all-too familiar with the scene. You’ll have read it, you’ll have seen it in films, and chances are you’ve even seen a slightly censored version of it in children’s cartoon programmes: It’s a dark night. A wealthy couple and their young son have just left a movie theatre and stepped out onto the streets of their grim metropolis. For some reason that no one has really explained in the past 75 years, there is no butler or chauffeur waiting for them outside the theatre to drive them home, so they instead opt to take a detour down a secluded back alley. Then, out of the shadows, a man appears and pulls a handgun. He demands of the family their money and valuables, and – within the space of a few chaotic moments – the couple is shot dead; their son left alone, kneeling yet semi-cruciform, between their bodies. This is, as everyone knows, the story of Batman: who he is, and how he came to be.
It really shouldn’t come as any surprise, then, that this is also where Fox’s new series Gotham – which has just reached the mid-season finale of its run on Channel 5 in Britain – chooses to start its story, yet for some, the fact that they were starting at this point was something of a turn-off from before the series had even aired. A story about Batman’s city before there was Batman? How could that possibly be at all engaging? At least with Smallville (the critically acclaimed CW series which similarly dealt with the early years of one of DC’s iconic superheroes), Clark Kent was old enough to have discovered his powers and start to be a proactive force in the world around him. What could a story about the child Bruce Wayne, fresh from the murder of his parents, have to offer?
The answer is that Gotham is not a series exclusively about Bruce Wayne in the same way as Smallville was mainly about Clark Kent. Nor – to second guess anyone who may think they know what is coming next – is it exclusively about Jim Gordon and the GCPD (although he is the de facto main character of the series). The true strength of Gotham is that it truly is an ensemble piece. It follows the stories of several characters and each of their ongoing story threads in the wake of the murder of the Wayne’s – which has sparked a sea change in the titular city, and destabilised numerous long established power structures – and how those threads intertwine with one another and with the new case that is investigated in each episode.
The cast is, for the most part, a very strong one. On a week-to-week basis, the main plot of each episode does revolve around Detective Gordon’s (Ben McKenzie) work at the GCPD, and his twin goals of discovering the identity of the Wayne’s killer and cleaning up the corruption in Gotham. He is both helped and hindered, often in equal measure, by his partner Detective Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue).
The dynamic between the two is both entertaining and engaging, in some respects calling to mind the fractious relationship between Sam Tyler and Gene Hunt in the 2006 BBC series Life on Mars (more so, in fact, than did the American remake of that series), with Gordon being the mostly by-the-book idealist, and Bullock espousing the view that in order to work in Gotham means occasionally getting your hands dirty or looking the other way.
David Mazouz convinces as a young Bruce Wayne; Sean Pertwee is sublime as a no-nonsense Alfred; and the casting simply could not be better for a teenage Selina Kyle and pre-Riddler Edward Nygma than Camren Bicondova and Cory Michael Smith respectively.
However, the most engaging characters and plot threads of the series come in the form of the machinations and power-plays of the various members of the Gotham underworld. Jada Pinkett Smith plays original character Fish Mooney (a middle-tier Gotham gang boss with her eyes on becoming the head of organised crime in the city) with some relish, but without a doubt the series stealing performance has been that of Robin Lord Taylor as Oswald Cobblepot, better known to all others (much to his chagrin) as the Penguin. With similar goals to Mooney, but twice as insidious, Taylor’s Penguin is devious, cunning and sadistic in equal measure, with a veneer of effete obsequiousness masking a truly vicious psychopathy, the character’s presence is never anything less than compelling unsettling.
There are points that one may criticise about Gotham, or at the very least may put one on the back foot somewhat. First and foremost, if the underworld plot thread is the most engaging of the series arcs, then Gordon’s cliché-ridden tumultuous relationship with his deeply irritating fiancé  Barbara (Erin Richards, though the fault is probably the part as written rather than hers) is its antithesis.
I’ve also read other reviewers criticise what they see as tonal inconsistency in Gotham. Whilst I understand the argument, I wouldn’t say I agreed. Whilst it is true that it does swing between quite brutal violence (stabbings, beatings and one evisceration) and camp ridiculousness (a criminal who murders his victims by tying them to weather balloons) on a regular basis, for my money, this is actually a fairly accurate translation of the comic book source, which likewise deal with – frankly – preposterous ideas in rather graphic detail. However, if one’s experience of Batman is either Adam West silliness or Christopher Nolan verisimilitude, then the meshing of the two styles, may indeed come across as jarring.
Also, it does stick in my craw a little that so many of Batman’s rogues gallery are being introduced into the series as his seniors. The Penguin is somewhat understandable as being quite so significantly older than Bruce Wayne, but when it comes to characters such as Harvey Dent, Edward Nygma, Victor Zsasz, and – if we are to believe the rumours for next series – Scarecrow and Mr Freeze, it begins to feel a little contrived, in my opinion.
Overall though, I found Gotham to be a very enjoyable series. It has its flaws, there is no doubt about that, but for the most part it is a nice spin on the crime thriller formula, staffed by a cast of entertaining and engaging characters.
I greatly look forward to its return for the second half of the series in the new year.
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