Or it could just as easily be a prequel to 1966 Batman.

§ February 23rd, 2022 § Filed under batman § 1 Comment


Was just browsing the DC Comics section of HBO Max, hoping they’d added back on those remastered Shazam! ’70s TV shows I didn’t finish watching on the DC Universe channel, where I saw they had the first two seasons of Pennyworth available. Well, I gave the first episode a try over the weekend…and now I’m about four episodes in and it’s pretty great.

When I first heard they were doing an “Origin of Batman’s butler Alfred” series, I was…well, not “skeptical,” because, you know, whatever, do your show, but more “indifferent.” As of a couple years ago, I had already been mostly burnt out on the sheer amount of superhero TV and had really cut out a bunch of the shows I’d been watching, so I wasn’t really in the mood to start up yet another series. Helping that decision was that Pennyworth was originally airing on Epix, a streaming channel I didn’t, and still don’t, have.

Now in the couple of years since the show launched, whatever little I’d heard about Pennyworth was very positive, with folks describing it as kind of a wild ride. And now that I’ve seen it…yup, that’s a fairly apt description. It’s an action/adventure set in 1960-ish alternate-history England, that in a way feels like similar adventure shows made in the ’60s, along the lines of The Avengers and such. Only, you know, with more swearing. Great opening credit sequence, too.

I said someone naively on the Twitters “yeah, the Alfred in this series I could definitely see growing up to be the Alfred in Gotham, which was another buckwild TV take on the Batman saga. Apparently this connection, or lack thereof, had been a point of contention since Pennyworth started. The two shows are very much of a piece, and at that link there it quotes one of the honchos from the show as just straight out saying “yes, Pennyworth is a prequel to Gotham, so I guess that’s that.

Anyway, good show, glad I finally tried it out, and now I just need to figure out when to watch my free entertainment time seems to just grow smaller and smaller nowadays. But the seasons are a short 10-episode run apiece, and the episodes go over easy. I should also note that the show hasn’t really leaned into “look at this, this will be a Batman thing in the future!” much at all, aside from the presence of Bruce Wayne’s eventual parents Thomas Wayne and Martha Wayne née Kane. I’m hoping it stays that way, but I wouldn’t put it past this show to lay a giant penny on us at some point.

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