It seems that some penguins can fly after all. Or at least this one can: HBO’s hardbitten Batman spin-off, named after his oily, beaked nemesis, goes into this weekend’s Emmy Awards ceremony with a shot in seven major categories, among them Lead Actor, for Colin Farrell. The team responsible for caking the Irish actor in thick, transformative prosthetics already bagged The Penguin a Creative Arts Emmy last weekend – one of eight technical wins. If there’s often said to be a sort of shlocky, low-prestige sheen to superhero adaptations, it seems someone forgot to tell the voters.
But here’s the rub: The Penguin is really rather good. Centring on the character of Oswald Cobblepot – played gruesomely by Danny DeVito in 1992’s Batman Returns, and here given the fractionally less fanciful name of “Oz Cobb” – the eight-episode series is less a superhero romp than a dark crime melodrama. The writing is taut, the plotting twisty but credible. The Penguin’s Gotham isn’t just a den of moustache-twirling do-badders, but a seedy ecosystem of operators, all with their own complicated motivations. Widespread comparisons to The Sopranos are overflattering, but the ancestry is self-evident: Farrell, unrecognisable both physically and behaviourally in the role of the bulky urban gangster, cuts an almost Gandolfinian figure. Like Tony Soprano, Oz is, at core, a nasty thug with mommy issues.
Generally speaking, HBO has struggled to maintain its clout in the era of streaming: compared to Netflix, resounding ratings successes have been few and far between. (Critically, it has fared better: The Penguin is the latest in a long, consistent line of awards dynamos for the US broadcaster.) The Penguin, though, has been an unmitigated success, becoming the third most-watched HBO or Max show when it comes to debut seasons, behind Game of Thrones spin-off House of the Dragon and The Last of Us. Just as the series slowly unfurled, so its viewership swelled too – a testament to the strong word-of-mouth among those who were actually watching.
Before the series premiered, audiences had already got acquainted with Farrell’s craggy and rebarbative Penguin get-up, thanks to a handful of memorable scenes in 2022’s The Batman. If the series never quite matches the scope or flair of Matt Reeves’s stylish, emo-moody blockbuster movie, then it never really tries to, either: The Penguin, narrowing its focus to local gang wars and intra-familial conflict, never feels too big or too small for its ideas. Farrell, for what it’s worth, isn’t even the best performance in it. That honour goes to Cristin Milioti (Palm Springs; Black Mirror), playing mobster progeny and possible serial killer Sofia Falcone. Wily and complex, Milioti’s character is compelling beyond the material, and if the series returns for a second run, it would do well to position her even closer to the centre of it.
The Penguin is not the only genre series to compete for awards this year: Disney’s blisteringly good Star Wars spin-off Andor is competing for many of the same plaudits. But it’s worth noting just how far above most of its comic book contemporaries The Penguin sits. The year’s crop of Marvel shows – including Daredevil: Born Again, Ironheart, and Agatha All Along – have struggled to make any sort of significant impact, either critically or commercially, outside the built-in genre fanbase. The Penguin is that rare superhero adaptation that has successfully marketed itself as a drama for adults. It is a programme that asks to be taken seriously – and it has been.
All of which is made more remarkable given the fundamental ludicrousness of the setup. Farrell might not be sliding whole fishbones down his gullet like DeVito’s black-lipped grotesque, but there’s still something inherently silly about a famed Hollywood leading man making himself as rough and unflattering-looking as possible. (Think Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder dialled up to the nines.) That The Penguin is able to get audiences to move past the whiplash of Farrell’s aesthetic transformation is credit to him and the robustness of the storytelling. To (loosely) paraphrase The Dark Knight: this might not be the series that Emmy voters need, but it’s the one they deserve.
