These last few days, I have been watching this quite brand new series about the early days of one of the most famous characters in DC comics. As so happened, it caught my attention because I have heard about the plan to make this series but I did not realize it had been completed until last week. Plus with the hype of Joker movie, it feels just perfect watching this now. Anyway, I'll just go ahead with the story.
Brief Story Line
Set between 1950s and 1960s London, a young Alfred Pennyworth (Jack Bannon - The Imitation Game etc) had just returned to his hometown after 10 years of service in the elite British Special Air Service (SAS) with his fellow army friends, the hot headed and always drunk Daveboy (Ryan Fletcher) and the calm Bazza (Hainsley Lloyd Bennett). They all worked at a night club as bouncers, but Alfred had always had high ambition and wanted to open his own security consultant. He also still lived with his parents, Mary (Dorothy Atkinson) and Arthur (Ian Puleston-Davies).
Alfred finally got his break when he came across a wealthy American businessman named Thomas Wayne (Ben Aldridge) who had some hidden agenda. They would later be cooperating with Martha Kane (Emma Paetz) and got entangled with a group of people called Raven society who had some political motive that would endanger England. Raven was led by Lord James Harwood (Jason Flemyng) and he had a trusted assassin named Bet Sykes (Paloma Faith) with her protective older sister Peg (Polly Walker).
So could Alfred be successful and how would he resolve the situation with Raven society? Find them all in this interesting series.
End of Brief Story Line
This series was developed and executive produced by Bruno Heller who also did the same thing for another popular series Gotham which was set during the early days of Bruce Wayne and focused on the young detective James Gordon before he became commissioner. In that series, the character Alfred Pennyworth (Wayne's butler) was very important as Bruce's father figure. I think it was due to his popularity that they came up with the idea of making a series on Alfred's younger days. So if Gotham was sort of prequel to Batman, Pennyworth was the prequel to Gotham.
When I started watching the pilot episode, I felt quite intrigued. Alfred was portrayed quite well by Jack Bannon and I could really picture him as the younger version of Alfred from Gotham (portrayed by Sean Pertwee) with his hairdo and heavy voice (although Bannon seemed a bit skinny but that was small detail). That episode provided some interesting plot opening and introduction of few of the characters. But as the story progressed and more characters appeared, the story became a little bit more complex. Btw, one interesting fact, all the episodes' titles (except pilot) were having female name such as Lady Penelope, Julie Christie etc, and the episodes were mostly more than 54 minutes with the pilot > 1 hour.
To my surprise, the series had quite a lot of people involved and at first I thought it would focus on Alfred solving other people's problems but few episodes later, I could see that it also focused on Thomas Wayne & Martha Kane (future parents of Bruce Wayne aka Batman). What started as a bit light quickly became heavy especially with the political turmoil happening in the fictional London city then. The other characters were quite important as well like Alfred's friends who usually provided help, or his parents who had significant role later, plus of course the three Raven society people.
This series also had some nicely done choreographed actions with few surprisingly violent scenes. There were once or twice brief nudity scenes which did not appear at all in Gotham. I guess it could be understood seeing that Gotham was aired on Fox channel, while this one was available via streaming on premium cable Epix (owned by MGM) which was usually more loose in the censorship. The setting and costumes were seriously done for a series. I also loved the British accent and the dialogues in here as they were filled with dry humor and sometimes witty sarcasm.
Of all the 10 episodes in the first season, the first few episodes and the last two episodes were my favorites. The ninth episode strangely felt like a season finale, but as I continued watching, the 10th episode ended with a bang that I did not see coming, which set up for a really intriguing second season (obviously I hope they would make, otherwise it would be too frustrating). Oh I also have a strong comic book sense here, like there was a bit of unrealistic feel of certain things that could have happened only in imaginary world. But for me personally it was not a big deal.
Overall this was quite interesting series. Something that you could probably enjoy better if you had seen Gotham series before so you could imagine the younger version of "that" Alfred Pennyworth. However, even if you did not see that one at all, you could still watch this as independent series. Just remember that the Batman reference would be very limited. So if you like to see an adventure series set in that period of London, with some nice actions and drama, then this one certainly could be an option. But if you prefer watching series with strong and lots of Batman references, then Gotham would be a better choice.
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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