'The Penguin' review: With no Batman around, series is a soggy disappointment  

WHAT IT'S ABOUT This eight-parter picks up in the wake — literally — of 2022's "The Batman," after Gotham has been flooded by the Riddler and Gotham crime boss Carmine Falcone is dead. As such, there's a power vacuum in Gotham. Will the Falcones, and Carmine's ruthless daughter Sofia (Cristin Milioti) fill it? Or the Maroni crime family, run by Sal Maroni (Clancy Brown) from behind bars? And what role will Oz Cobb — AKA the Penguin (Colin Farrell) — play in all this? Cobb is a thinking mobster, and a covetous one, but with Carmine gone, now what? For starters, he enlists help — a kid off the streets, Victor Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz), as his driver. We also meet Oz's mom, Fran (Broadway veteran and Tony Award winner Deirdre O'Connell).

To the obvious question: Batman? He has no role in this series.

MY SAY There have been any number of Penguins over the years, since DC Comics launched the dastardly villain in 1941, but for arguments' sake, just two are instantly recognizable. The first was Burgess Meredith's "aristocrat of crookery" from the camp classic TV series (and 1966 movie) and Danny DeVito's round mound of malevolence from 1992's "Batman Returns." Screen hogs of the first order, both forced generations of viewers (and moviegoers) to see the Penguin as an outsized egg with a waddle and umbrella, who would do anything for a laugh, and who largely succeeded.

Then along came Matt Reeves and Colin Farrell in 2022 to say goodbye to all that. "The Batman" (directed by Reeves) re-imagined a human-scale Penguin (Farrell), who hinted at more of a Marvel villain than DC. Never playing for laughs — the Batman cinematic universe has long since left those behind — this Penguin was, and is, a midlevel monster on the make, scrounging for scores and brutally dispatching anyone who gets in his way. But underneath that mountain of prosthetic clay beats a heart; Oz has dreams just like anyone else, and fears. He's the product of a traumatic childhood, head case mother (think Livia Soprano), and a physical disability (that limp). He has smarts, ego and ambition, and he's also underestimated by everyone, which drives him. Oh, and no one calls him "Penguin" (or would dare), plus there's not an umbrella or monocle in sight.

Nor is Batman, who seems to have gone on a long and well-deserved vacation after the end of the movie. We are meant to assume the Caped Crusader is out there, but an assumption is a lot to hang a series on. As such, "Penguin" does at least raise an interesting philosophical question: Can a supervillain exist without Batman or vice versa? It's the yin to the yang of this corner of the DC universe: Where there is evil there must be good, and where there is despair there must be hope.

Where there is Penguin, there must be Batman.

Maybe Reeves has a trick ending to this season, where the Bat Signal appears once again over a troubled Gotham, and Batman arrives just in time. Maybe, maybe not, but in the meantime, you must be content with a standard-issue mob turf war TV series, with thick overtones of "The Sopranos," as heavy and as gloppily applied as all that clay weighing down Farrell. This "Penguin" is a proximate real world, and not even a slightly heightened version of one, with no Batman and no fantasy world to escape to — or for it to escape to.

Instead, you're left to grope your way through the gloom without an expectation of anything on the other side, other than a setup for the next movie in 2026. Best of luck on your journey, and don't forget the umbrella. You'll need one.

BOTTOM LINE Soggy disappointment