What’s so special about Irish actors and Batman villains? Back when Oppenheimer was a small mushroom cloud in Christopher Nolan’s eyes, Cillian Murphy was delivering a nuclear performance as the Scarecrow in Nolan’s Batman Begins. Two years ago, Barry Keoghan was hinted at as a possible Joker in Matt Reeves’ franchise reboot The Batman. If Saoirse Ronan isn’t revealed as the new Poison Ivy in the next six months, I’m throwing away my Batarang in disgust.
In the meantime, fans of comic book villains and Irish actors in latex masks can enjoy Colin Farrell in The Penguin (Sky Atlantic, Friday, 9pm). This spin-off of The Batman is very uneven and often extremely slow – but my goodness, Farrell is a powerhouse as aspiring criminal Oswald Cobblepot.
Farrell was introduced as the Penguin in The Batman, but the film didn’t seem to know what to do with him, and he came across as an inept drag in the Dark Knight’s battle with the Riddler. Here he’s much fleshier – and “flesher” is the right word, as Farrell operates under a mountain of prosthetics that give him jowls that no one knew people could have.
The Dublin actor doesn’t seem to have found the process particularly rewarding. “It was a bit irritating,” he said of the prosthetics. “I ended up complaining to anyone who would listen that I wanted it to be done, damn it.”
Farrell’s acting equal is Cristin Milioti, who plays Sofia Falcone, the daughter of the late crime boss Carmine Falcone. With her father dead during The Batman, everything is at stake in Gotham City’s criminal underworld, and Sofia is determined to get her piece of the pie. She’s ruthless but unstable – and a victim of the Gotham patriarchy that institutionalized her when she previously tried to get into the family business.
Farrell and Milioti have the charisma to hold their own in a dull drama that tries to be the DC comics version of The Sopranos. Aside from a few Easter eggs at the end, the film disavows all Batman storylines (Robert Pattinson’s Dark Knight doesn’t appear). Instead of spandex-clad weirdos brawling on rooftops, it revels in subpar gangland cliches – it’s goodfellas in capes, but without the brilliance of a superhero or the lurid verve of a decent mafia adventure.
Still, you can’t blame Farrell for that, as he tries hard to give us a compelling origin story for Oz – a wrong guy whose drive to rule Gotham’s underworld is surpassed only by the mother complexes that have twisted his mind.
He is joined by Encanto actor Rhenzy Feliz, who seems to have come out of a young adult adaptation of Batman, playing an orphan boy who Oz takes under his wing. The cast also includes Clancy Brown as Salvatore Maroni, another Gotham mob boss, and Michael Kelly as Carmine’s old lackey and potential obstacle to the ambitious Sofia.
They all do their best, but a morbid script inevitably gets in the way. As a showcase for Farrell, the series has its charm. But as a convincing addition to the Batman universe, The Penguin is shockingly mediocre.
