Cristin Milioti Steals the Show in the Mediocre, Shallow 'The Penguin'

By Lindsay Traves | TV | September 30, 2024 |

It was a dream come true: more Batman media, built on gangster stories like The Long Halloween, and serialized on a premium network. Then, down went a finger on the monkey’s paw.

We survived the similar curse of Joker and only briefly mourned the Terence Winter series that could have been and were prepped and ready for the newest Batman-less adaptation of a great character from one of the greatest collections of rogues screaming to be put on screen. In a world outside Fox’s Gotham shows, there’s now The Penguin, a proper HBO gangland drama from the network behind the golden age of television’s greatest. Though it took inspiration from that era, The Penguin is itself a hollow collection of mob stereotypes that are barely held together by the performances of its leads.

Colin Farrell rolled over his performance from 2022’s The Batman as Oz Cobb (“Cobblepot” seemingly just too silly for this brooding version) into the lead of this newest series. Oz is a desperate wannabe gangster, lonely and volatile, who seems to only collect allies at gunpoint.

This Gotham story picks up after the events of The Batman where Carmine Falcone has been killed, Sal Maroni (Clancy Brown) has been jailed, and the city slums have been flooded by Batman’s face-off against The Riddler. Staring into a power vacuum, Oz clunkily worms his way into the empty throne by using words and bullets to keep Maroni, Alberto Falcone (Michael Zegen), and the newly released Arkham patient, Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti) out of his way. Along with his reluctant sidekick, Vic (Rhenzy Feliz), Oz pushes his weight around Gotham, desperately spitting out lies and weaving yarns in an attempt to gain himself the power and attention he so craves. But of all his greatest foes, Sofia is the most difficult to conquer. While she is susceptible to manipulation (as ensured by the torture she experienced at Arkham State Hospital), she is a woman with nothing left to lose and for whom volatility is a sport.

It’s a tale as old as gangster cinema: a power vacuum and a race for the crown, a new elicit product, battling families, guns, knives, explosions, and nicknames. One which The Penguin grabbed onto in an attempt to craft a beefy enough series to justify putting Farrell in all that makeup for eight long episodes. It should have been possible; missing patriarchs and hesitant heirs have made for delightful shows like Gangs of London, The Gentlemen, and Succession (and even long-running comic series) but The Penguin has no supporting depth or character quirks beyond giving each lead a frail mother (which is really saying something for a show based on source material known for zany villains and a lead known for a top hat and using an umbrella gun).

Oz’s tenderness with his ill mother doesn’t feel like depth (even if it’s the catalyst for his big moment); it feels like the same cheap trick used in Joker to mix love with something putrid and call it “backstory.” Oz’s motivation is having idolized a gangster whom he saw get respect, a flimsy villain tale built around guys like Henry Hill or Tony Stark’s disposable foes. It’s tempting to compare him to Tony Soprano (his appearance), Tommy DeVito (his desperation and volatility), or Frank Costello (his unpredictability and style of manipulation), but he’s nothing like them. They’re either characters built with depth or supporting players, whereas Oz is meant to carry a series (alongside Sofia), and these bits seem more part of Farrell’s performance than they are the writing.

Farrell might be wearing the large suit, but Milioti does all the heavy lifting. Sofia, who is by far the most compelling, is played as self-aware and irrational, angry about the death of her brother; the one family member who seemed to care about her. Her entire ethos seems to be “woman is gaslit to the brink,” but Milioti brings so much to it that the greatest episode is one that spends time with her marooned at Arkham.

No one else gets much more beyond that, save for some life given to Vic as a stand-in for the forgotten victims of organized crime, villains, and vigilantes— the impoverished kids on the wrong side of the tracks. Vic’s tale would be interesting if it had any teeth (and is more interesting than what we’ve seen in Spider-man or the MCU), but the series is so constrained by not wanting to mention Batman that it shies away from engaging with how the wealth disparity and city crime could create more criminals who’d have contempt for the man in the bat suit who crushes their homes with his brute force fighting style. The series also isn’t interested in engaging with mental healthcare (thank goodness, to be honest), but by turning away from it, it crafts a confusing narrative about whether Arkham was therapy or torture for Sofia.

Since Gotham isn’t real, all Italian American accents from every era seem up for grabs. And therein lies the show’s confusing tone. Adapting superhero comicbook page to screen can oft lead to a tone problem, especially in the era of super serious movies where we need to buy into people dressed in silly costumes wreaking havoc on a city. The Penguin wants to live in the world of The Batman where things are stripped down and dim (as inspired by Se7ev), but then dances a bit too close to camp while lacking the self-awareness to deliver on either.

What’s left is a collection of episodes built on changing loyalties, Oz’s ever-evolving lies, and shock by way of each mover’s latest actions. It spends its first episode desperately catching viewers up to speed, then meanders in the middle until a finale that has no stakes beyond “is Sofia gonna blow that up?” I’m simply not convinced that Oz is enough of a protagonist to carry the series, nor is the story big enough. The Penguin feels like an acting exercise for Farrell, who has to sell being everyone’s best friend and enemy, and Milioti, who has to play into dramatic irony as a would-be queenpin being made a fool of by Oz’s spell. Maybe this is the closest thing to a Batman gangster adaptation we’ll ever get outside of those few table scenes in Batman (1989). If anything, it supports my campaign for everyone to check out Batman: Caped Crusader.

The first episode of The Penguin premiered on HBO Max on September 19, 2025 and then became available to stream on Max, and subsequent episodes will release weekly on Sundays thereafter.