The world is an irredeemably wicked and violent place from which little to no good can ever come.
Grimly cynical yes but that seems to be the prevailing worldview of almost everyone in Gotham, a city ruled over by a witches brew of organised crime and institutionalised corruption where the overwhelming consensus seems to be to look purposefully and defiantly the other way.
Someone though forgot to give rookie police detective James Gordon (Ben McKenzie) the memo, and the decorated war veteran takes to his new profession with gusto, determined to rid his adopted city of its dank and poisonous soul in the latest superhero TV show to hit the small screen Gotham.
Gordon’s crusade of sorts sports an laudable aim surely but one which smacks of Don Quixote tilting at a thousand windmills as everyone from Gordon’s ennui-laden, casually violent corrupt police veteran partner Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue) to the captain of the Gotham City Police Department Sarah Essen (Zabryna Guevara) and gangsters like Fish Mooney (Jada Pinkett-Smith) and the king of Gotham’s rancid underbelly Carmine Falcone (John Doman) all seek to convince that joining them is far easier than opposing them.
He isn’t convinced of course but with the support of his fiancee Barbara Kean (Erin Richards) and innate sense of right and wrong that he can’t openly persuaded to abandon, he maintains the rage albeit while appearing to largely go along with the powers that be.
This makes him of course the perfect person to bond with a young, impressionable, deeply traumatised Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz), newly orphaned after the brutal slaying of his parents by a supposed mugger, and looked with zealous, almost familial regard by the family’s butler Alfred Pennyworth (Sean Pertwee), who within days of the tragic event is well on his way to become his eventual alter ego Batman.
Having lost his father to a random shooting when he was just a boy, Gordon is able to empathetically talk to the young boy on the night of the murder, the two of them sitting in an alleyway, joined by a shared experience that no one should ever have to go through.
Making a commitment to bring his parents to justice, Gordon sets about trying to find out who was behind the vicious crime, an investigation which brings him into contact with many of the proto-villains who will become Batman’s most trenchant adversaries such as police coroner Edward Nygma (Corey Michael Smith), sociopathic gangland operative Oswald “Penguin” Cobblepot (Robin Lord Taylor), and sassy street kid Selina “Cat” Kyle (Camren Bicondova).
Noe of them, of course are the people they will eventually become of course but in the fertile soil of Gotham’s degenerative culture, it won’t take long for them to become the criminal legends of lore, part of one of the most diverse and profoundly fleshed out cast of rogues in any superhero universe.
They are not, naturally enough, the focus of Gotham, nor of Gordon’s attention which is focused much more immediately on finding the killers of Bruce Wayne’s parents and solving the multitude of other crimes besetting the good people of the seething metropolis, while keeping his hands as clean as possible in the process.
It’s an uphill task, and one you could argue neither he or Batman are ever destined to permanently win but it’s fascinating watch him try to clean up a city that looks to be all but irrevocably soiled.
Its that kind of rich characterisation that marks Gotham as one of the more complex entries in the increasingly crowded TV superhero show field.
With relatively long established comic book to TV shows like Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Arrow, and new season entrants like Constantine, and the well-reviewed The Flash jostling for company on viewing schedules, Gotham needs to have a real point of difference to attract attention.
It achieves this through superbly drawn characters – some work better than others but all makes for compelling viewing – a glossy visual aesthetic which combines grim realism and retro fantasy to pleasing effect, and story lines that don’t simply focus on a case of the week approach in and of themselves but use them to explore still further into the murky world of Gotham and the compromised souls who call it home (something you see to great effect in the second episode “Selina Kyle”).
So well wrought is the show from the get go that you feel as if you have walked into a show already half a season in, a high complement for any show since most struggle to form any kind of cogent identity or ongoing consistent narrative momentum till well into their first season, and sometimes not even then.
This is not to say the show ticks all the boxes – it can’t for instance quite decide of it is going to follow Christopher Nolan’s darkly gritty take on Gotham, or Tim Burton’s more theatrically over the top one although it seems to be settling, in the first two episodes at least, for a serious drama with flourishes of cartoonish flair – but it manages to hook you almost immediately and take you immediately and deeply into a world that newly-arrived James Gordon is still trying to figure out for himself and makes it case for you sticking around.
It will be intriguing to see how the relationship between Gordon and Wayne develops, how the nascent detective fares keeping his soul squeaky clean and how he deals with the fact that for all his efforts villains like Catwoman, the Penguin and the Riddler all manage to emerge on his watch.
For now though, Gotham, a robustly substantial show with much to recommend it, is focusing on Gordon’s growing bond with young Bruce Wayne and the rise of the Penguin, played with delicious lunacy and coldblooded sociopathy by a talented Robin Lord Taylor, and looks worth sticking around for, if only to see if good has even the remotest chance of triumphing over evil.
Here for your additional viewing pleasure (after watching the first two episodes of course) is the trailer for the series but a series of character profiles which includes naturally enough the city of Gotham itself.