Regular pickle’s just one pickle?

Continuing my trip up Empire's top 20 TV shows of 2024

#12 :  The Penguin

From the Riddler-enforced floods that washed away half of Gotham in The Batman has risen one of the most complicated, corrupt and compelling villains that the fictional city has ever seen. And without the caped crusader in sight. Lauren LeFranc’s spin-off series stands firm as a viscous and vastly entertaining crime show that sees Colin Farrell’s besuited Oz go to war with Sofia Falcone (a beguiling Cristin Milioti), having recently taken the crime boss mantle from her deceased father. It’s also a fascinating dual character study as we learn more about Oz’s self-made and ruthless charmer and Sofia’s evolution from Arkham Asylum survivor to respected criminal leader. Through their stories we see Gotham in a new light, without the series leaning too heavily on Batman lore.

I watched The Batman and had some nice things to say about it - but I had a whole load more bad things to say about it. Colin Farrell was one of the better things about it, but I don't think anyone was crying out for a TV spin-off - and I also suspect expectations weren't generally sky-high for it. I was however, curious enough to check it out last year - this is the first thing on the list that I've previously watched.

And I watched it all. I might have checked it out because of curiosity but I was expecting it to be watchable but pretty rubbish - but it was very quickly patently obvious that what we had here was something actually pretty special. Chronologically, it follows on immediately from the film, but various episodes flash us back in time to give us a bit of context about the main characters - and throughout it's gripping, looks fantastic, has great story-telling and acting and has an absolutely heart-breaking ending that hits you hard. It's quite possibly the best thing I saw on TV all year - it's surprising because it's way better than they needed to make it, but I'm really glad they put in the effort.

Colin Farrell as Oswald Cobb/The Penguin is as great in this as you'd expect him to be. It's interesting because he's almost indistinguishable under his layers of prosthetics and the character doesn't feel like a fit with the sort of thing he usually does these days, so it's unclear why they decided to cast him - but it all worked out well for everyone.

Going up against him, Cristin Miloti as Sofia Falcone is at least his equal, if not better and they go on quite the journey together (and apart). The only thing I knew her from was Palm Springs, which she's very good in but this is a definite step up - it's a really well-written role of a woman struggling to make her mark in a man's world and she excels in it. Episode 4 gives us her back story and it's a fantastic piece of story telling and you take the journey every step of the way with her. Colin won a Golden Globe for his award but Cristin lost out to Jodie Foster, who was good in True Detective, but nowhere near as good as Cristin imho - the more I've seen of TV from this year, the more I think she was robbed.

The other stand-out for me in quite a large cast was Rhenzy Feliz as Victor Aguilar who is also great in an innocent-abroad role who Oswald takes under his wing, meaning he looks up to him whilst also being terrified of him. It was also interesting to see François Chau as the head of the Triads - it took me ages to remember where I'd seen him before but he played Dr Chang in Lost (which debuted over 20 years ago now!) and Jules-Pierre Mao in The Expanse.

I know its association with Batman will have scared people off, but this isn't a superhero show at all - it's an honest-to-goodness crime caper (it has a lot in common with The Godfather) which is elevated through exceptional acting, writing and plotting throughout. If you've not seen this then I really can't recommend it highly enough (particularly for Cristin's performance) - it's on Now TV so you really should check it out.

#13 - It looks good, but makes no sense at all