The first reviews for The Penguin are nothing to squawk at. HBO’s Colin Farrell-fronted crime saga set within the world of The Batman landed on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes on Thursday, and the first reactions are overwhelmingly positive. With a 91% approval from critics, the spinoff series is officially certified fresh — and better critically reviewed than the 2022 movie from filmmaker Matt Reeves, which scored 85%.
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The Penguin is “a masterful examination of criminality, twisted, disturbing and deeply enthralling,” writes Variety critic Aramide Tinubu, who heaps praise on Farrell and his Oscar-nominated makeup that transforms the actor into an aspiring kingpin who is “as pitiful as he is dreadful.”
Lauren LeFranc (Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) created “one of the best television series of the year,” according to NPR‘s Glen Weldon. Despite being “another Batman-without-Batman show” (after Gotham, Pennyworth, Batwoman, and Gotham Knights), Weldon favorably compared The Penguin to HBO’s The Sopranos as “a psychological drama dressed up in mob clothing: It delivers its pulpy,satisfying thrills alongside its more esoteric, intellectual pleasures.”
Rolling Stone critic Alan Sepinwall disagreed, calling The Penguin“a Mobdrama with a lot of carnage, but lacking a compelling orcomplex enoughcharacter at the center of all its mayhem,” and Farrellin the title role “a dour, bitter, two-dimensional character whoseperpetual ability tooutmaneuver his competition grows frustratingbecause he’s not deepenough to be spending this much time on.”
EW‘s Christian Holub writes that the Batman spinoff “manages to tell anentertaining crime saga without leaning too much on the absent DarkKnight,” adding that the show “still ends up falling prey to some of the weaknesses inherent in Batman adaptations … But though The Penguin accomplishes its goal of telling aBatman story without Batman, viewers may be left wondering around thefifth or sixth episode of this eight-part series, ‘Wait, why am Iwatching a show about the Penguin again?’”
Cristin Miloti (TV’s Fargo and How I Met Your Mother), in her role as Penguin rival Sofia Falcone, delivers the show’s “defining performance,” according to Daniel Fienberg’s review for The Hollywood Reporter. Her performance as a recently-released serial killer “makes Sofia more plausible than Oz as a tragic victim andembodiment of everything wrong with Gotham, a figure you can feel sadfor and scared of in equal measure,” Feinberg writes. “The mano a mano dynamic between the pair yields Milioti and Farrell’s best work, but the interplay viewers will crave peaks far too early.”
Writes Eric Goldman for TVLine, “While it can’t quite deliver the thrills of seeing Batman himself in action, itprovides an entertaining and involving detour, diving further into thepivotal mobster side of Gotham City that fuels many of the Dark Knight’sadventures.”
The Penguin — starring Colin Farrell and Cristin Milioti alongside Rhenzy Feliz, Michael Kelly, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Deirdre O’Connell, Clancy Brown, James Madio, Scott Cohen, MichaelZegen, Carmen Ejogo, and Theo Rossi — premieres Thursday, Sept. 19th, on HBO and Max before shifting to Sunday nights starting with episode 2 on Sept. 29th.
