The Penguin is the prestige tv show you should be watching
Seriously.
By now you’ve probably heard a lot about Colin Farrell’s performance as The Penguin in the eponymously-named series. That’s for good reason. In a year that has given us some amazing performances (Ebon Moss-Bachrach in The Bear, Anna Sawai in Shogun, hell the whole cast of Shogun), Farrell’s rendition of the Boss of Gotham is especially delicious.
You’ll hear me say this in the pod, but I’ve long believed Colin Farrell has suffered from the same disease as Brad Pitt: he is a character actor in a leading man’s body. In other words, Farrell is almost too handsome to be taken seriously.1 Free of this impediment courtesy of a huge body suit and some gold teeth that are doing a lot of work, Farrell delivers.
Maybe this has been coming for a while. I think Hollywood tried to push Farrell down our throats as the Next Big Thing for a while and I don’t know that anyone (maybe especially him) really wanted that. He was good opposite Tom Cruise in Minority Report and likeable in The Recruit even though Al Pacino was god awful, but his best stuff has always been smaller films like Tigerland (though I thought he was excellent in the Miami Vice remake). Go watch him in The Gentlemen and not agree that he steals every scene he’s in. And of course the tabloids got after him and yeah he partied. But’s what’s a guy to do?
But it seems now that we are fully ready to accept Farrell as a real, live actor. His real life bromance with Brendan Gleeson has offered us two of the great dark comedies of our time: In Bruges and The Banshees of Inisherin.
So now that we’ve accepted Farrell back into the fold, are we ready to accept a crime drama set in the Batman universe but featuring exactly zero appearances by Batman? That’s the question I asked Blake Scott Ball, associate professor of history at the University of North Alabama and author of the forthcoming book Batman: The Making of an American Myth. You may remember Blake from his previous appearance on the pod to talk about Batman (1989) and he’s already agreed to come back on at Christmas time to talk about Charlie Brown.
In this episode we talk about the inspirations for the Penguin, his portrayals in comics and in film over time, the Italian-American influences on the show, Gotham as New York City, and question whether or not we should root for the bad guy, which you can see in the clip below.
Ultimately we ask one final question: should you be watching The Penguin?
Absofreakinglutely.
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HATM Watch Party
This week the HATM Watch Party dials it all the way back to the Great Depression. Join us on Amazon Prime this Sunday, September 29 at 8pm eastern for The Boys in the Boat. Trailer below.
Hey thanks so much for being here. I write this stuff and put on HATM because y’all inspire me to do so. We’ve got even bigger stuff coming soon. If you’d like to help us grow, you can share the podcast on social media when it comes out, or tell a friend about the pod. And if there’s stuff you want on the pod or the watch party, hit us in the comments below.
JWH
They’re not alone: Charlize Theron had to assume human form to win her Oscar.
Farrell is very good in the recent streaming noir Sugar.