Review: "Gotham - Season 1"

HELLER, Bruno (developer), “Gotham – Season One”, 2014-2015, DC Comics/Warner Bros./Primrose Hill Productions

In TV-land, especially on the supernatural fringes of that territory, Lovecraft and his creations seem to have become a touchstone for horror and fright-mongering. In recent productions, we’ve seen the Cthulhu Mythos take centre stage in an episode of “Supernatural” (wherein “The Haunter of the Dark” was sloppily executed); The King in Yellow become the nexus of a serial-killer’s madness in “True Detective”; and the Alhazred couplet (“That is not dead...”) used as a zombie–making spell in “Sleepy Hollow”. It seems that television writers have seen in Lovecraft’s work a veritable mine of material to plumb for their own ends and are falling all over themselves to throw in as many knowing references as they can.

It’s certainly no recent phenomenon. Way back in the 1980s “Cast A Deadly Spell” turned Fred Ward into a Chandler-esque movie version of Lovecraft in a world where magic was as common as potato chips, and the “Evil Dead” series of films made much out of the Necronomicon as the source of all, um, “deadites”. However, in the world of comics, the tradition is even older.

Arkham Asylum became a feature of the Batman landscape early on in the ‘80s when guys like Frank Miller were re-inventing Gotham City for the next generation of comics fans. By making Batman the “Dark Knight” the bat-landscape went from a brightly-coloured, high-camp playground for the spandex club, to a moody, corrupted, nightmare environment where psychoses and serial-killers stalked the streets and the only way to beat ‘em was to join ‘em. Of the many fantastic graphic novels which emerged during this renovation process, “Arkham Asylum” remains one of the touchstones for bat-fans everywhere: a more sinister comic was never unleashed upon an unsuspecting readership. Nowadays, perhaps the process has gone too far with the introduction of Gotham’s sister-city “Blüdhaven” – which we’re informed is even worse than Gotham – as a playground for Nightwing, but if nothing else it shows that there’s still life in the concept.

Obviously the works of HPL were an influence in this process and the name “Arkham” was lifted from there to underscore the insanity prevalent in the menacing world of Gotham City. In this way, I suspect that Lovecraft’s vision got a free boost as newcomers began to explore the roots of their four-colour reading matter. I’m not sure that Bob Kane – who was writing the first Batman and Robin tales while Lovecraft was building Arkham City – would have entirely approved, but time has shown that the tale of Bruce Wayne’s rise to become the protector of Gotham has lost none of its power to intrigue and to captivate.

Which brings us to this TV show. I approached this offering with some hesitation; I felt perhaps that too much blood had been drained from the carcase of the Bat and that this show would come off half-arsed and cheesy. The franchise has not been entirely free of misfires and false starts (“Batman and Robin”, anyone?) and shows like “Smallville”, “Arrow” and “The Flash” (the first one, not the current one, which I haven’t yet seen) haven’t really engendered much confidence in the small-screen treatment of the material. With characters like The Penguin, The Riddler and Catwoman front and centre, there’s a fine line between their portrayals working, or falling hopelessly flat. Anyone who saw the Catwoman movie with Halle Berry will know exactly what I mean.

It has come as a complete surprise to me therefore, how absolutely enjoyable this series is. DC, in its recent blockbuster manoeuvring around Marvel and the so-called “MCU”, seems to have all the creative energy of a flaccid balloon. Superman has launched and re-launched to no great effect; Aquaman seems poised to make a big-screen debut (seriously? Aquaman?) and “Suicide Squad” seems – to me at least – a poorly-considered misfire. I keep hearing that there’s a lot of excitement about “Batman vs. Superman”, but it feels forced and overwrought, as if they’ve let off all their fireworks in the afternoon. Less “wow!”; more “meh”. And yet Marvel are going from strength to strength. In the middle of all this lacklustre effort, it’s a pleasure to find that something is going right.

“Gotham” drops its focus from the cosmic events of Kal-el to the street-level dinginess of the city’s back alleys and its constant in-fighting of Mafiosi, all trying to topple Carmine Falcone from his perch as Godfather. The people are terrified; the cops are hopeless; the criminals and the elite live fat off their ill-gotten gains. Into this hell walks rookie detective James Gordon, keen to make his mark in memory of his father, a former Gotham City District Attorney. The scales are quickly torn from his eyes as he becomes gob-smacked by the blatant lawlessness and corruption, represented mainly by his new partner Harvey Bullock. Trailing in Bullock’s wake, we and Jim are introduced to the conniving and deadly nightclub owner ‘Fish’ Mooney, and her “umbrella boy” Oswald Kapelput (or Cobblepot, as he prefers) soon to become The Penguin. Shortly thereafter, the iconic shooting of Thomas and Martha Wayne takes place and we’re off to the races.

The brilliance of this show is in the casting. There’s not a single wrong note here. I was at first a little hesitant about Ben McKenzie as Gordon but he has enough range to cover all the bases that make a convincing future Police Commissioner of Gotham. Harvey Bullock, as played by Donal Logue, is a nice reintegration from Paul Dini’s award-winning “Dark Knight” cartoon series and plays fast and loose, dodging the flak from both the cops and the criminals. Ed Nygma (Cory Michael Smith), Gotham City Police Department’s forensic expert and soon to be The Riddler, is as crazy as you’d expect, but perfectly grounded in this environment. Others like Falcone (John Doman) and his opposite number Don Maroni (David Zayas), the nascent Catwoman (Camren Bicondova, who looks exactly like an animate Blythe Doll), Sean Pertwee as Alfred Pennyworth – there’s no-one here who doesn’t take their role and play it pitch perfectly. Even Bruce Wayne, boy-billionaire (David Mazouz), is great to watch: I was sure that he was going to be the weak link but he, too, belts it out of the park. But better than all of these are ‘Fish’ and The Penguin.

I expect Jada Pinkett-Smith read this character and just sank her teeth into the part. Her performance recalls Eartha Kitt’s Catwoman from the 1960s “Batman & Robin” TV show – all purr and deep menace – but she rages and spits as well. She plays for keeps in a relentless pursuit of power and it’s a sheer delight to watch. Fighting opposite her is the snitch with aspirations, Oswald ‘The Penguin’ Cobblepot (Robin Lord Taylor): dressed as a reject from some early noughties emo-band, his role is a high-wire act that could so easily have come crashing down in ruin. Spectacularly, it doesn’t, and every episode sees him clawing at another desperate inch of respect on his gruelling climb to power. Seriously, I’ve lost count of how many times he’s had the crap beat out of him, but it’s worth it just to watch him get his revenge.

Sadly, ‘Fish’ gets betrayed about halfway through the season, not by her associates (although that happens too), but by the show’s writers. After being chased out of Gotham she goes through a series of scenes on a remote island as part of a captured band of prisoners being culled for their organs. The sequence does little to reinforce or progress her character and signals the only bum note of the show. It feels like the writers didn’t know what to do with her after her fall from grace; surely they could have come up with something better than this?

One essential reason why this show works so well (apart from the material being iconic and tracking Bob Kane’s vision from origin through Frank Miller and Paul Dini to the latest blockbuster trilogy by Christopher Nolan, avoiding all of the missteps along the way) may not be immediately obvious to the uninitiated. Those in The Know will spot the name Ben Edlund popping up now and again: this guy is the creative genius behind the quintessential cartoon superhero romp “The Tick”: they say that satire cuts to the heart of that which it lampoons, so if anyone knows vigilantes, it’s Edlund. If you look really carefully, you’ll spot the odd headline reference to the Fledermaus, the cowardly Bat-clone from Tick’s The City.

To wend my way tortuously back to my first point about HPL and the Bat-scene, in this show there’s a corrupt (of course) city developer who goes by the name of Richard “Dick” Lovecraft, who shares a memorably-disturbing scene with a not-yet-completely-batshit-crazy Harvey Dent (Nicholas d’Agosto), in the episode entitled “Lovecraft”. Don’t get your hopes up however: Dick Lovecraft is just a corrupt slumlord who cops a bullet in the noggin and nothing more. There’s nothing Lovecraftian happening here apart from the name. Still, as yet another passing reference in an otherwise busy show, perhaps more fans will be brought over to the Mythos as we know it.

Four Tentacled Horrors from me.