Fox’s ‘Gotham:’ Not a Costume Drama

Is Fox’s new series “Gotham” really just another “Smallville?” 

Well, maybe. But presumably the focus will be more on Commissioner Gordon and the Gotham City police department. However, Fox chairman Kevin Reilly spoke in more detail about the series at the Television Critics Association press tour panel and mentioned the caped crusader:  “Batman will be followed from the time he’s a child to “the final episode of the series when he puts on the cape.”” This does sound a bit like “Smallville,” where Superman didn’t wear the suit until the finale, and even then it was only the briefest of glimpses.

Of course, talk of Bruce Wayne growing up and wearing the cowl depends on how long the show lasts. If it doesn’t earn a full season’s commitment or is canceled after a single season like “Birds of Prey,” then viewers will never get to see young Master Wayne turn into the brooding Batman we all know and love.

What is promising, though, is that Fox has secured the rights to “ALL the classic Batman characters — The Joker, The Riddler, Catwoman, Penguin and Batman himself. They will all be young versions of the characters and the show will tell how each became the psychologically damaged character we love today.” But it will be before they don tights and leather and clown makeup. “We’re not starting in that world where the villains are in costume. You see markers for it that are delicious you see where the evolution and eccentricity where they become those characters. We don’t start off with capes and costumes,” Reilly stated. 

I think there’s so much potential in a series set in Gotham City. For me, one of the more intriguing elements of the Batman adaptations is the darkness, the grittiness of the underbelly of the city set against the glittering world of the wealthy, and Batman coexists in both worlds. Combine that with the aforementioned psychological damage sustained by some of Gotham’s more colorful characters, and you have a world populated with complex villains and an even more complicated hero. And it looks like this will, at least in part, be a police procedural, so there’s that standard element with a rich cast of crazies, most of whom will likely end up in Arkham Asylum.   

And what sort of emotional punch will it be to watch Bruce Wayne grow up without his parents? To discover that vermin lurk in his city and he must take action, because each person he saves is another person who won’t have to be mourned by an orphaned child.

So.much. potential. But will it fail to impress, as many seem to be disappointed with “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.?” Expectations of comic character adaptations are usually high, and the depiction of Gotham could be as dark and fascinating as it was in Tim Burton’s journey into this world, or . . . we could have day-glo colors again, as with Joel Schumacher. 

Please, anything but that. And Mr. Freeze’s cheesy one-liners.

“Gotham” will air on Fox and from all indications should premiere next season.

 

(via EW)