Watch The Penguin from HBO
Watch The Penguin from HBO – The transformation of Oswald Cobblepot from a disfigured nobody to a noted Gotham gangster.
Though it stars Colin Farrell, reprising his part from Matt Reeves’ 2022 film The Batman, and is set just after the catastrophic events in Gotham that the Riddler masterminded at the end of the third act, you’re better off thinking of the Penguin as a kind of YA Sopranos than an addition to the Batverse.
The Caped Crusader doesn’t appear and all the villainy on show – including that of the Penguin, now known as Oz Cobb instead of Oswald Cobblepot in a further move away from cartoonishness – is of a very human kind.
Carmine, his boss and head of the Falcone crime family, was killed at the end of The Batman.
There is now a power vacuum in the city and the series follows the Penguin’s attempts to rise from his position as a mid-level gangster, trusted to run a nightclub and a portion of the gangsters’ drug business but never fully accepted.
It is his yearning for respect that drives him on through the deadly game of snakes and ladders towards his goal of dominating Gotham and makes
Watch The Penguin from HBO – The Penguin into much more than just another money-grubbing spin-off of a famous franchise.
Storyline for The Penguin from HBO
Following the events of The Batman (2022), Oz Cobb, a.k.a. the Penguin, makes a play to seize the reins of the crime world in Gotham.
The Penguin lets nothing get in the way of its story, though.
The plotting is fast and neat, with Cobb only ever a hair’s breadth away from triumph or disaster and the audience left breathless watching which way the latest twist will take him.
Farrell – really a revelation here, despite being buried beneath layers of prosthetics – keeps the desperation of an underestimated, under-loved being running always just beneath the surface of the ruthless killer.
Glimpses of the man he might have been (with Sofia, with his sort-of girlfriend and with Victor) are just frequent enough for us to mourn the loss.
The Penguin is a slick and powerful beast, with enough action and heart to capture existing fans and create many more.
And Farrell himself should soon be swimming in a sea of awards.
Episodes of The Penguin from HBO
S1.E1 ∙ After Hours
The death of Carmine Falcone and a post-flood crime wave motivates Oz Cobb to fill the power vacuum left in the criminal underworld of Gotham City, while Falcone’s children attempt to keep their family together.
S1.E2 ∙ Inside Man
Sofia works to secure her family’s strength, while Oz attempts to play both the Falcones and Maronis to his advantage.
