You can put away the shovels; there’s no digging necessary, the lede will not be buried. The Penguin is one of the best shows HBO (and streaming on Max) has made in years and definitely the best show they’ve made since Succession ended. If you’re looking to fill a Logan Roy-shaped hole or you’re wondering why House of the Dragon isn’t satisfying your need for Game of Thrones content and you’re hoping to find what will, look no further than The Penguin. You can stop searching for a replacement for prime GOT, you can stop waiting for the next Succession-level show, you can even stop reading right here (but don’t, please). The Penguin is simply that good. Is it as good as Succession? No, I don’t think so. Not quite. Is it better than Game of Thrones when you look at the entire series as a whole? Absolutely.
If you don’t know the Penguin as a character, he’s Oswald Cobblepot, a deformed Gotham City criminal with delusions of standing; he lives in a sewer, drives a distinct limousine, eats live fish, and has a crazy array of trick umbrellas that have more gadgets than a Swiss Army knife—everything but the carousel reversal spray—but this time, he’s a bit different. He goes simply by Oz to those who know him well and the last name is shortened to Cobb. And while he doesn’t live in the sewers, he certainly has permanent residency in the Gotham underworld. Gone are the tux and tails, gone is the limousine, gone is the living sushi. Replacing them is a series of clothes normal people wear, a purple Maserati with gold wheels that’s so ugly it looks like something that even Jared Leto’s Joker would reject and was left on a dealer lot gathering dust, and, you know, cooked food. Oz’s nickname—the Penguin—is a sore spot, born from his distinctive waddle due to a deformed leg. Colin Farrell picks up the role from the conclusion of Matt Reeves’s The Batman, as Gotham reels from tragedy that changes the city forever.
But The Penguin isn’t interested in Batman. As much as he remains a looming specter over the city, The Penguin can stand on its own as a story and doesn’t rely on name dropping constantly like HotD. Rather, the show is interested in telling its own story, getting deep into the seedy underbelly of their fair city, telling Oz’s tale as a man who gambles more than Oceans 11, 12, and 13 combined and shucks and jives more than the Duke boys. He’s always looking for an angle, doing his best to walk into very dangerous rooms and walk out somehow still alive. I promise you, no big top has ever had a more precarious tightrope act, nor one nearly this impressive. Farrell completely disappears into the role of Oz Cobb, thanks in part to his extremely convincing make-up job, but also his performance. If you remember Farrell solely from his early 00s heartthrob roles, it may come as a surprise, but his acting ability has always been there. In Bruges and, more recently, The Banshees of Inisherin cemented him as a great actor in my mind (and yes, even Fright Night); hell, even in the terrible second season of True Detective, his performance was possibly the only redeeming quality. Farrell is on top of his game here. And the best part is that he’s not alone.
To call The Penguin a star turn for Cristin Milioti is to understate how much she should be a household name already. If you only know her as the mother who got in the way of Ted and Robin in the awful How I Met Your Mother, you have been sleeping on one of the most talented actresses to grace the silver screen in years. After her role in Fargo season two, I watched and waited for her to get her due and start to pop up everywhere. Yes, she did the wonderful Groundhog Day-like Palm Springs that released during the pandemic and her episode of Mythic Quest was the best in the entire series, but that didn’t do as much to make her stock rise as it should have. I’m hoping that’s not the case with The Penguin, because Milioti deserves all the praise I can heap on her and more. Here, she plays Sofia Falcone, daughter of the recently deceased mob boss Carmine Falcone, released from Arkham Asylum after 10 years of incarceration. And if you know anything about Batman lore, even if you go into Arkham sane, that much time there leaves indelible marks on mind and body. Her performance as Sofia Falcone manages to outshine even Farrell’s as she navigates life on the outside in a family hostile to her and a city even more hostile, where she’s known as a serial killer called The Hangman. I can’t go much into the details of her character arc because that would rob you of the true delight of watching her masterclass, but trust me when I say that whenever she is on screen, she will command your attention like little else in television does today.
And rounding out these powerhouse performances is a young actor I’ve never seen before, but, again, to tell you more about him, even naming the character here would take something from the experience for you, and you deserve to be as delightfully surprised and as on the edge of your seat as I was. Suffice it to say, there’s no one in this show that doesn’t deliver. Even the casting change from Jon Turturro to Mark Strong for Carmine Falcone (in flashbacks, obviously) works out just fine. It’s a top notch cast working with a top notch script and great directors. You’re in for a true treat.
Everything about this show is satisfying. Every single little thread that is started is woven in and comes to an excellent conclusion; nothing is simple, nothing is convenient, nothing is unearned. Everything about The Penguin is expertly crafted. From wardrobe to cinematography to each and every line, this is peak television. So many times, a scene would start one way and I thought I knew how it was going to end—just a side effect of consuming and studying media as much as I do—but then I would be delighted that it didn’t play out the way I thought it would. More than just subverting expectations for the shock value, The Penguin puts together coherent and original storytelling where not everything goes to plan. As Oswald Cobb does his best to say the things that need to be said to save his skin, the show manifests itself as a true accomplishment in a time when I feared that originality is only met with cancellation and the collective shrugging as we head off to the next by-the-numbers superhero movie or derivative procedural. Yes, The Penguin is part of a huge IP, but it doesn’t need to be to work.
Perhaps the most surprising and enjoyable part of this show is the incredible depth of storytelling. This isn’t just a criminal story, it isn’t just Succession with guns, it’s a truly deep and rewarding narrative that will have you feeling things that you never expected to feel when watching a show about a character that was once fed a fish by Michelle Pfeiffer like a dolphin in a tank. I’ve often said that villain-centric stories don’t interest me because villains are only interesting as foils for their heroes. A great villain is nothing without a great hero with whom to battle. Without a protagonist to root for, a villain story is just, well, a lone idiot dancing on a staircase to a song written by a child predator. But even though the protagonist here is a villain, even though he is perhaps the monster people think he is, there are far worse in Gotham. And the show doesn’t shy away from the things that make a villain, that build them, that turn normal people into those wrongdoers they eventually become; much like every good iteration of Batman has, including the venerable Batman: The Animated Series. Nothing happens in a vacuum and The Penguin is keen to show you that. While we’re all trying to battle not with monsters lest we become one, Oz’s battle is not just with the mobs and gangs of Gotham City, but with the city itself; with a broken system that allows people—all once innocent children at some point in their lives, just like Oswald was—to go down a path where crime and criminality are not only the sole option, but also aspirational. It is through violence that those with no options find a way to make something of themselves, to be loved, to be adored, to snuff out their humanity and replace it with material success and power. And in telling this story, The Penguin does what Joker utterly failed to do—present a compelling story with human characters who are at the mercy of an unforgiving world and respond in the only way they know how. The Penguin is quite simply a must watch.