Word on the street in Gotham is that The Penguin is the new top dog – on Rotten Tomatoes, anyway.
The new HBO crime drama, starring Colin Farrell's Oz Cobb, is currently sitting pretty with a 93% critic score on the review aggregator. That's higher than 2022's The Batman, which managed 85% from, admittedly, a far wider range of reviewers.
Our own review of The Penguin lauds one of the "best performances in Batman’s on-screen history" from Cristin Milioti as Sofia Falcone, AKA The Hangman.
"Her charm as an actor will be unsurprising," our deputy entertainment editor Fay Watson wrote. "But it’s the sheer brutality that she brings to her role that really takes everything up a notch."
The Penguin reactions elsewhere are similarly effusive, with outlets calling it a "near-perfect mobster story" and a "spiritual sequel to The Sopranos."
Despite the hype, expectations should be tempered in one respect: don't expect Robert Pattinson's Batman to swoop in and save the day.
"Rob is not going to be in the show," The Batman director Matt Reeves told Total Film. "I’d rather take the Band-Aid off now. We did talk about all that but we felt the best way to do this was to go on a grand exploration of a guy grabbing for power in this moment."
