IIf you want to understand how prestige television (an imperfect term, but stick with it) has changed over the past 25 years, it makes sense to start with the series that invented the category as we know it: The Sopranos. An HBO gangster drama whose antihero Tony Soprano is a brutal but troubled middle-class mafioso with boundless ambition and crippling mother issues, it delivered all the violent thrills typical of its genre. What set the show, which premiered in 1999, apart were cinematic production values, brilliant performances, a perfectly calibrated tone that balanced gloom with humor, and creator David Chase’s unsparing examination of Tony’s psychology, the Sopranos as a family unit, and the state of the American dream on the eve of the 21st century.
25 years later, another highly anticipated gangster drama will premiere on September 19th. The Penguin can also be described as an HBO gangster drama, whose antihero is a brutal but problematic mid-level mafioso with boundless ambition and crippling maternal issues. How The Sopranosis characterized by haunting production design and remarkable acting. Criminal psychology, family dynamics and the American dream are among its main themes; the shows share a pessimism about these issues that felt insightful at the turn of the century. But that is where the similarities end. Even considering that The Sopranos was an unrepeatable masterpiece, The Penguin is a disappointment in a simplified form and reflects the industry-wide decline of what – if we confuse quality with branding – we call prestige television.
A big difference between the two series is of course that The Penguin expands an extraordinarily lucrative franchise – Batman – within the superhero empire of HBO parent Warner Bros. Discovery, the DC Universe. In showrunner Lauren LeFrancs (Agents of SHIELD) Gotham, which is even darker than usual, has just seen the crazed Riddler blow up the city’s seawall on the night of a mayoral election. The residents of an impoverished neighborhood, Crown Point, have been hit hardest. The number of victims is rising and entire homes have been destroyed. And in the midst of the chaos, someone has murdered the powerful crime boss Carmine Falcone.
Played by executive producer and acclaimed film star Colin Farrell, who initially disguised himself for the role with a fat suit, facial prosthetics and a cartoonish working-class accent in the “New Yoik” style. The Batman—Oz “The Penguin” Cobb is determined to take advantage of this change. In a tense encounter, Carmine’s drug-addicted son and successor, Alberto (Michael Zegen), condescends to Oz, calling him a “good soldier” and declaring, “You are who you are, and you couldn’t change if you tried.” Little does he know how right he is.
The conversation takes a turn when Alberto mocks a moment of apparent vulnerability in which Oz lays out his vision of the gangster ethic and praises the “real old guy” who ruled the poor neighborhood where he grew up: “He helped people. If someone in your family was sick, he’d get you a doctor. You didn’t have enough money for rent? He’d advance you the money. He knew everyone’s names, too. I don’t know how he remembered them all, but if he saw you on the street, he’d call you and ask how you were. It felt like he meant it.” When the man died, his neighbors held a memorial parade. The monologue is pure Tony Soprano, wistful for an idealized past when a violent criminal could still be a pillar of the community.
Yes, like Tony, Oz hypocritically admits that despite all the blood he sheds trying to fight his way to the top of Gotham’s drug trade, he has principles. The Penguin is not subtle on this (or any other) point. “I have a damn code!” he insists later in the series, convincing a group of small-time bosses to unite under his leadership. Further proof of his generosity comes when he takes under his wing a recently orphaned Crown Point teenager, Victor Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz), whom he catches trying to steal the hubcaps from his garish purple and gold car. And in one Sopranos The parallel is so obvious it must be an allusion: Oz has a demanding, demented, cantankerous old mother named Francis (Deirdre O’Connell) who waits impatiently in a drab suburban house for her son to make something of himself and give her the Gotham penthouse life she’s always longed for. Chase didn’t need to infuse the relationship between Tony and his mother with incestuous undertones to convey its toxicity, but for LeFranc, that element is a convenient shortcut to creating the same impression.
As the Penguin plans his rise, he pits the Falcones against their rivals, the Maroneys, in a dangerous double agent tactic to gain sole control of a new drug that BlissAlberto’s sister Sofia (Cristin Milioti) becomes his main foil. Freshly released from Arkham Asylum, Sofia harbors a grudge against the male counterparts who put her there to prevent this smart, competent woman from taking her rightful place at the top of the family. Despite her distrust of Oz, who was once her driver, her isolation among the Falcones leaves her vulnerable to his manipulation. With Farrell so physically limited he might as well be playing Grimace, Milioti’s back-to-the-wall portrayal clearly stands out. But for too long, her character development, which squeezes female empowerment out of female trauma, is a simplistic one we’ve seen too many times before.
And as for Oz himself, if you guessed that he is an avatar for Donald Trump in another reality, well, Thing, thing, thing, thing. While The Sopranos predicted a bad end to the American century and captured an indefinite mood of decline more than two years before September 11, The Penguin presents another unflattering portrait of a man whose archetype has haunted television and cinema since his first presidential bid. Driven by his own justified insecurities, Oz puts his demagoguery on full display in his theatrical appeals to the downtrodden and aggrieved, from Vic and Sofia to the working-class gangsters who loathe wealthy elites like the Falcones and the Maroneys even more than they hate each other. “The real power,” he promises potential supporters put off by his treacherous reputation, “comes when we have each other’s backs.”
The Penguin gives speeches like this all the time, laying out his worldview for viewers, who spend most episodes scrolling on their phones while the audio washes over them, to consume his thoughts. “You still think there is good and evil, right and wrong?” he sneers at Vic. “There isn’t. There is only this: survival. Safety. Pleasure. There are no awards for dying in the public housing.” The repetition within the show, as well as television’s fascination with Trumpian villains (see: scandalby Hollis Doyle, A man in full‘s Charlie Croker, Kate Winslet in The regime), can drive you mad. (In this case, the Trump comparison is undermined by Oz’s rise from poverty. Without the former president’s nihilism, his story arc just makes too much sense.) In a letter to critics, LeFranc admitted she wrestled with why viewers wanted to see more of this archetype before worrying about the future of her two young sons, wondering, “Are bad people born? Or are they made…?” The thing is, The Penguin This question is never answered convincingly. And the results of the former president’s ten years of analysis from his desk were apparent long before he left office.
In the best case The Penguin is a powerful reminder to believe people when they tell us who they are. Milioti’s performance and the agile, noir-tinged direction of talented collaborators like filmmaker Craig Zobel (Z like Zacharias, Compliance) and TV veteran Helen Shaver (Station Eleven, maid), its greatest asset is the utter wildness of LeFranc’s finale. But without the moral nuance that The Sopranos so ripe for musing and discussion that getting there is a tedious journey, overwhelmed by broad characters whose dialogue bubbles like something out of a comic book. The miniseries’ final moments could have had a much greater impact at the end of a feature film that wouldn’t be forced to fill 10 hours of screen time with dozens of unnecessary scenes, too many unnecessary twists and repetitions, both figuratively and literally.
Such is television in the revenue-starved, post-streaming-wars landscape of 2024. Too often, what makes it onto our screens, even in the glossy guise of prestige programming, isn’t a triumph of intelligent, boundary-pushing storytelling. It’s there because executives can bank on it to keep subscribers on their platform for entire weekends, thanks to big-name actors or familiar IPs or the all-ages accessibility of scripts that contain absolutely no subtext. (When I spoke to Chase in late 2023, he lamented the feeling in today’s TV industry that there’s “a lack of interest … in psychology, ambiguity, spirituality.”) The Penguin is far from the worst new show of the fall season. At least it has some style, a point of view, something to say, no matter how corny it is. (Have you seen Fox’s umpteenth budget-friendly adult animated series? Universal Basic Boys(Fine – don’t.) But in its mediocrity, it’s as much an indictment of a declining medium as the dumbest trash the networks have to offer.
