The new Fall show with the most hype has undoubtedly been
Gotham, which aired last night. So does it live up to the hype?
Gotham is filled with lots of close-ups and saturated colors which suggest its comic book origins without being too overt an homage. Show creator Bruno Heller (
Rome, The Mentalist) is definitely going for a more noir than Comic-con vibe. It was stylish and held my interest. It was fun seeing characters I grew up with (mostly the villains, of course — Catwoman (Camren Bicondova), The Riddler (Cory Michael Smith), Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor), and Poison Ivy (Clare Foley) — before they became famous. Jada Pinkett Smith played a new character, Fish Mooney, the local (and incredibly stylish and violent) gang boss.
The first episode opened with a young pickpocket Catwoman scaling a tenement fire escape and witnessing the murder of Bruce Wayne's parents, as well as Gotham's newest detective, James Gordon (Ben McKenzie) and his slightly shady partner Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue) at the crime scene. As in other interpretations, Gotham is a city you might not want to visit and definitely never live there. The mostly dark episode did have a few humorous moments and was intriguing enough to make me try it again next week. I guess that's all any television show can ask.
