This, like Andor of Disney+, is one of those things that sounds like a joke, as in, a spinoff show of a middling movie that is a small outlier in a large IP (for those not aware, Andor is, sadly, not about the Wheel of Time country, but the eponymous deuteragonist of "Rogue One" ). This is about the Batman villain famously depicted by Burgess Meredith and Danny DeVito on the large and small screens, respectively, and more recently by Robin Lord Taylor on "Gotham" and now Colin Farrell on "The Batman" and this show.

But despite being a direct sequel to "The Batman" there is almost no significant connection to the superhero. There is a single shot of the Bat signal shining over the city, and that is the only reference to the hero of the piece. The story concerns the repercussions of the events of the film, which concerned the mafia in Gotham and political corruption, ending with a major flood. On the show, the city is still recovering from the flood and the poorer residents in the less affluent neighborhoods are struggling with their losses and quality of life having dropped to post-apocalyptic levels, while the city's underworld is adjusting to the blow they were dealt in the film.

Ozwald Cobb is a mid-level operative of the Falcone crime family, who had a minor red-herring role in "The Batman", is the protagonist of the show, as he struggles to try to keep his narcotics distribution going after his supply was damaged in the flood, while his "association" is undergoing a reorganization. Most of the plot is him wheeling and dealing and hustling to try to keep up his action and protect or advance his position in the Falcone family.

Cobb is crippled, has an unappealing face, and is generally overlooked and dismissed by most of his superiors, even the children of former boss Carmine Falcone (Mark Strong, a recast from John Turturro in the film), who are familiar with Oz, who used to drive for the family. As the show goes on, he empathizes with, and falls back on as a base, the other loe-level and marginalized members of the underworld in general and the Falcone Family in particular. He is driven by a desire for respect, and expresses a wistful nostalgia for the romanticized bygone image of mobsters, often recalling a neighborhood boss who acted as a protector and benefactor to his territory, and was honored by the people in turn. In the first episode, he takes under his wing a kid named Vic, from the neighborhood, who, having lost his family to the flood, is trying to make his way in a street gang. Vic becomes his protegee and errand boy, and it's suggested that Oz sees him as something of a kindred spirit with his stutter and awkwardness. Oz is also taking care of his mother, Francis (Deirdre O'Connell), whom he tries to keep hidden from his criminal associates, and whose mental health is shaky at best, even as she both tries to provide emotional support to Oz, while making constant demands and complaints about their standard of living. He's also her sole support, with his father long gone and his brothers dead. So Oz has a lot to juggle, and no one cutting him any breaks.

In the uppermost echelon of the Falcone family, Carmine's son, Alberto is trying to succeed his father, while the capo's daughter, Sofia (Cristin Milioti, of The Wolf of Wall Street & title character of How I Met Your Mother) has returned from a stint at Arkham, with the at-first unexplained nickname of Hangman looming over her. The other bigshots of the Falcone Family, most notably Michael Kelly's Johnny Vitti, are less than sanguine about the next generation simply inheriting the business on the basis of their name, and Oz tries to play the different factions of the bosses against each other to carve out his own position and income. He also gets involved with the leadership of the rival Maroni family, whose patriarch Salvatore (Clancy Brown) is in prison, forcing Oz to deal with his much more ruthless wife, Nadia (Shohreh Aghdashloo).

With all this on paper, Oz seems like he's perfectly positioned to be the lovable, kinder-gentler mobster trope (why, if Batman shows up, we might even get annoyed at how he messes up Oz's schemes against those other, terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad gangsters), but he's way more complex and the layers keep getting peeled back even down to the very last episode, with even the final scene being kind of low-key shocking. You're never sure how much of his relationship with the other characters is motivated by care for them or self-serving impulses, or what he actually would sacrifice to achieve his goals. The show does a great job of digging out a character who could be a credible antagonist to a superhero, from under 80+ years of baggage, mostly as a foppish cartoon villain with umbrella themed weapons, where even more recent attempts to ground him have veered into the grotesque (Devito in Batman Returns) or remained too cartoonish to take seriously (Taylor in Gotham). Oz's struggles and characteristics demonstrated in these 8 episodes really make him plausible as future incarnation of one of the most iconic villains of Gotham City.

Sofia Falcone is another great character, in a role that varies between secondary protagonist, to antagonist, as both a rival and ally of Oz. As with Oz, her backstory and character is unwrapped over the course of the season, revealing new layers and giving more depth to her motivations, and as with Oz, sympathy for her will also rise and fall, as she too attempts to scheme her way to the top and deal with her family baggage. She also reinvents herself over the course of the season, transforming from a seemingly stock, sheltered Mafia princess, to traumatized survivor, to someone whose mannerisms and style might fit in with some of the more campy iterations of the Gotham criminal world, while still being a character you have to take seriously. When she and Cobb are at odds, the viewer's sympathies will often vary a great deal.

Way too often these days, we often see original female characters inserted into works often with the intention of overshadowing the established lead, sometimes even as the primary character of interest to the creators, who are simply using the established characters or setting as a draw to get people to watch the story they actually want to tell about their own creation. I am pretty sure Sofia Falcone is not original - I vaguely recall someone of that name in "Gotham", at least - but she is sufficiently obscure, whereas her father, Carmine, has been played by some rather impressive actors, such as Tom Wilkinson and John Dornan, and of course, Oz is the nominal draw for the show, that if someone just told me about the degree of attention she was getting right off the bat (no pun intended), I would have assumed this was just another one of those things, like Sabine Wren or Captain Marvel or Mystique or Helena Shaw or Rey Palpatine. But, that is absolutely not the case. And "The Penguin" shows how you CAN carve out space for a female character in a show ostensibly about an established male subject character, and even make her an at-times sympathetic foil to said male lead, without taking it over and veering into fan-fiction nonsense. You don't even need a male showrunner to bring a "proper" perspective to creating and developing such a character (this one is helmed by a person named Lauren LeFranc, whose biggest prior job was writing for Agents of Shield).

As I mentioned above, while this works great within the context of the Batman setting, as an origin story to a major villain. it can be viewed entirely on its own, without even reference to the film from which it is a spin-off. Aside from Penguin and Falcone, the only characters from the movie are the police chief (not Gordon) in a couple of scenes, and the mayoral candidate from the movie's plot, seen at a distance, once. Another Batman character is name-dropped in the wrap-up scenes at the end, and their connection to a major show character, as developed in the film, is alluded to. But there is not a mention that I can recall of Bruce or any other Waynes, or Alfred or Commissioner Gordon, or the Riddler. Beyond Carmine Falcone & Sal Maroni, who, from what I have seen, are strictly mundane, non-super villains in their other iterations, there is nothing of the Batman world in this. Yes, the name of nuthouse is Arkham, but that's all it is. There are no background cameos or easter eggs of other patients who might be Batman foes (unless the doctors' names count, which I did not notice). You can change all the names, and it still works as a crime drama and psychological exploration of its leads. This is a claim I have heard writers try to make about their ambitions for various Batman projects, which, however grounded they try to be, still involve the hero dressing up like a bat. But take away all the Batman connections and this is still a great, and probably my favorite, HBO mob drama. (And yes, I saw all of the Sopranos, more than once)