It’s been a mixed season for Batman fans. On the one hand, there were the twin disappointments of Batman v Superman (Ben Affleck gave us an insipid Batman) and Suicide Squad (Jared Leto gave us an insipid Joker; easily the worse offence). On the other hand, Will Arnett gave us one of the best Batman movies we could have ever hoped for. The Lego Batman Movie , apart from being three bagfuls of fun, was brutally honest and self-conscious in the way the funniest literary fiction is.
Somewhere in between these two poles lies Gotham , Fox’s prodigal child and one of the most over-the-top TV shows in recent memory. Gotham is a prequel Batman story, which hangs upon two pegs. The first is the story of how a young orphan named Bruce Wayne became the iconic Dark Knight, the protector of Gotham. More importantly, it is also the story about supervillains: how the city came to be populated by the likes of The Riddler, The Penguin, The Scarecrow, Two-Face, and, of course, Joker.
Ben McKenzie plays James Gordon, who we know as a disgruntled, world-weary cop and Batman’s greatest ally at the GCPD (Gotham City Police Department). Donal Logue plays his partner Harvey Bullock, a man with a knack for ethical grey areas and gallows humour. It is the villains, however, who are the scene-stealers of the show: Jada Pinkett-Smith treads the fine line between hamming and compelling theatricality as mob under-boss Fish Mooney, while veteran John Doman (how good was he in The Wire ?) plays Carmine Falcone, the old-school king of the Gotham underworld. Robin Lord Taylor delivers a breakout performance as Oswald Cobblepot/The Penguin, by turns vulnerable and sadistic.
The pick of the lot for me is the talented Cory Michael Smith (from HBO’s Olive Kitteridge ) who plays Edward Nygma, the man destined to become The Riddler, one of Batman’s most complex foes. Nygma is, at least initially, the archetype of the scorned nerd — he is awkward around women, ignored by most of his colleagues and harbours an obsession with puzzles. The two halves of his psyche — the mousy nerd and the smooth operator sociopath — eventually merge to form a seriously disturbed and formidable criminal. In a lot of ways, his evolution represents the intriguing mechanics of Gotham, a city where vigilantes end up escalating crime even as they try to stop it (a similar idea is suggested in the closing moments of the film Batman Begins ).
Late in the first season, we meet Jerome Valeska, who seems to be Gotham’s Joker — or at least an early forebearer. Fans already rate Cameron Monaghan’s performance as one worthy of the legacy of Mark Hamill and Heath Ledger, the two most loved on-screen Jokers. One hopes to see more of him in the ongoing third season (Netflix India).
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