The Penguin: the reviews are in, the series is said to be a masterpiece

Announced in the wake of the film The Batman (2022), the series  The Penguin  will land on the Max platform on the night of Friday 20 to Saturday 21 September 2024. The international press has already been able to see the entire of the series, which would be a masterpiece.

The Penguin: the first reviews are here

In 2019, three years after the immense success of the Jokerby Todd Phillips, Warner Bros. is once again reaping the benefits of a film that has strayed from a DC Extended Universe that increasingly resembles a headless chicken with The Batman. Drawing inspiration from David Fincher's cinema, and more specifically from Se7en and Zodiac, this new iteration of Gotham's Dark Knight shines as much by the strength of Robert Pattinson's performance as by Matt Reeves' splendid staging, enhanced by Greg Freiser's photography. Well received by the press and the public, the feature film has grossed more than $700 million.

Two years later, HBO will soon unveil the first spin-off series of The Batman. Entitled The Penguin, she invites us to follow the rise of Oswald Cobblepot, still played by Irish actor Colin Farrell, one week after the events of the first film. The various trailers suggest a show in the vein of the film, dark and very well orchestrated.A week before its launch on the Max platform, the international press had the opportunity to see the series, and the least we can say is that we should expect a work of very high quality.

Thus, our American colleagues at Collider use an extremely flattering comparison about the new DC series: “It's The Sopranos, but with supervillains.” It is recalled that The SopranosDavid Chase's (also produced by HBO) is regularly cited as the greatest series of all time. The crime world is so important in the series that it would be “closer to a gangster saga than a comic book adaptation” according to the review of Games Radar. For Variety, The Penguin would be a “brilliant study of crime“, at the same time “twisted, disturbing and deeply captivating“.

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One of the great strengths of The Penguin would be the power of interpretation of its main cast. For Discussing Film, which sees in the DC series a work “unbeatable compared to other adaptations of comics to television“, “Colin Farrell makes the Penguin one of the greatest villains ever seen in a comic book movie or TV series.” The same observation is made by IndieWire, which states that “Collin Farrell buries his disarming charm under 20 kilos of latex without hiding his considerable talent.” For The Hollywood Reporter, it is the actress Christin Milioti who offers “the most decisive performance of the series“.

Our French colleagues at Large Screenare considering this. them that The Penguin is not “yet another gimmicky spin-off” and on the contrary “amplifies with great 'intelligence the themes of his model“,  The Batman. According to L'Éclaireur Fnac, “The Penguin is a success and makes the additional promise of a very relevant universe“. Nevertheless, rare are the works that are unanimous, and naturally some critics have expressed their dissatisfaction. The magazine Rolling Stone considers that the DC series “lacks a sufficiently convincing or complex character at the center of this chaos“. Even more severe, the Daily Telegraph did not appreciate The Penguin's slow pace and considers that “despite Farrell and Milioti's efforts, this spin-off is not worth it“.

In any case, we can't wait to discover the first episode of The Penguin, at the end of next week. And you? Let us know in the comments section.