Maybe you've heard before: The penguinHBO's TV spinoff of The Batmanisn't good or even great, but better yet, it's the greatest achievement in prestige television since, I don't know.The Last of Us. The hype may be hard to believe for a variety of reasons. For one thing, the once-great superhero craze of the last decade has reached a point of bloat and desperation, with more misses than hits from both Warner Bros. and Disney. Five years ago, Todd Phillips joker was a billion-dollar hit, the rare W for post-Christopher Nolan DC-affiliated films, but earlier this month Warner Bros. released Phillips' long-awaited sequel. Joker: Slide for twojust for it to somehow flop as hard as Morbius And Madam Web. Matt Reeves The Batman, Despite not grossing more than a billion dollars, it managed to be a respectable coup for Warner Bros. We'll get a sequel at some point, but for now we've been treated to an eight-part miniseries about Oz Cobb. a triple-dealing gangster who works his way to the top of Gotham's criminal underworld. Robert Pattinson wouldn't appear in this series and Batman wouldn't even merit a passing mention. Colin Farrell would have to carry this thing. All in all, it was a shaky proposal.

But ultimately I have to agree with the praise: this show is actually pretty good – dare I say it better than it should be. This is, for the record, a series in which Farrell reluctantly dons uncomfortable prosthetics and waddles from one treacherous conversation to the next, bluntly using his thickest New York Italian accent in this relatively grounded drama about comic book gangsters who use fictional narcotics in Distribute “Not Manhattan.” The penguin is a spin-off from The Batman, Yes, but it unfolds intelligibly enough for anyone who hasn't seen the film or has forgotten what happened in it, and in any case vaguely knows that Penguin is the guy in the tuxedo with the umbrella who was once portrayed by Danny DeVito in one completely different version was played at the time. For hours you'll be lulled into believing you're watching a regular crime drama, only to be reminded again and again that these guys are making this futuristic, ophthalmological bang Cowboy Bebop. But it works – Farrell and Cristin Milioti deliver simply irresistible performances here.

The special strengths of The penguin are most clearly expressed in Sunday's episode “Cent'Anni,” which – having previewed the entire season – is, in my opinion, the strongest of the eight. This is an hour-long backstory about disillusioned mafia daughter Sofia Falcone, previously portrayed as a ruthless girl boss by Crystal Reed on Fox Gotham and now strikingly played with a far more hectic horrorcore demeanor by Milioti The penguin. Oz Cobb may be a villain, but he's our man; Sofia is a menacing figure who alternately distrusts and embraces him. She is also the only woman of rank in an otherwise paternal organization and, like the outsider Oz, fights an uphill battle for influence. Oz and Sofia go way back; When she was younger, Oz was her driver and, in a way, her advisor. But the backstory of the bad blood between Oz and Sofia is only part of “Cent'Anni”.

This episode is Sofia's origin story. It begins with a tender glimpse into her privileged childhood. Young Sofia is sweet, but she's also desperate to succeed her father as leader of the Falcons (rather than her rudderless younger brother Alberto), but she's still pretty naive to the nastiness that role requires. With some trepidation, she explores the painful topics of her mother's suicide many years ago and her father's recent dealings with prostitutes in his nightclub. Both Oz and Alberto warn her – patronizingly but wisely – to back off. She discovers a terrible truth: Carmine Falcone is not necessarily a crime boss, but also a serial killer who actually killed the mother of his children. When Carmine is alerted by Oz to his daughter's snooping, he shockingly blames Sofia for the murders, ending her in Arkham Asylum. The tabloids that sensationalized the method of murder now call her the executioner. She is deemed unfit to stand trial and must therefore languish under the hostile supervision of psychiatric doctors on her father's payroll, who perversely wants to ensure that his daughter is thoroughly and irreparably traumatized by the whole experience. This gauntlet of gaslighting and outright torture slowly but surely transforms Sofia into the wild-eyed bone crusher we know and love today.

This transformation strikes at the crucial balance present in many of the more effective superhero dramas: between the pride of being the whimsical stuff of comics and something a little more real and universal. In Arkham, Sofia meets Magpie, who if you didn't already know, you'd probably guess is another minor villain from the comics. She's the kind of inky and twisted character who stylishly represents so many of Batman, Gotham and Arkham's clichés. She clings to Sofia and mocks her survival tips, essentially daring her to give in to the injustice of her situation and become like her and the other women on the ward – all nervous, blood-stained lunatics. Ultimately she is broken, but she never fully becomes Magpie. Sofia is more confused and interesting: nervous, yes, as she develops the obnoxious habit of smacking her lips, but otherwise grounded, eminently functional and largely compassionate. After all, there are no saints in Gotham, not even Batman.

Batman is the epitome of a “street superhero”, a vigilante detective and back-alley thug who gets his hands dirty while being a wealthy scion – in stark contrast to the loftier missions of Superman or Wonder Woman. Gotham is the ultimate urban underworld. With The BatmanMatt Reeves has breathed new life into a character who would otherwise have become a dazed and bumbling fool in the hands of Zack Snyder and Ben Affleck, focusing more on the supernatural side of things. For much of its running time The Batman seems less determined to advance a plot than to create an atmosphere – the seedy atmosphere and hedonism of Oz's Iceberg Lounge. But of course The Batmana $200 million superhero blockbuster, had to culminate with the Riddler flooding Not Manhattan and launching an attack on Not Madison Square Garden in a cartoonishly over-constructed plot to assassinate the mayor. Batman won't appear The penguinbut and penguin, as depicted by Farrell in The BatmanHe was a relatively normal character and not a full-fledged villain. Here's his chance to spread his short wings.

The penguin is something that is admirably similar to Marvel's series of series on Netflix –Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist– produced before Disney launched its own streaming service and retroactively made these shows and every other part of the MCU exclusive to Disney. Daredevil was a middle-class superhero whose big-screen adaptation was pretty poorly received in the long-gone era of Evanescence, and the rest of those characters were nobodies. However, their relative obscurity worked to their advantage, as these shows were more or less free to develop their own styles, strengths, and stakes without regard to the arduous 20-year roadmapping of the larger MCU. These series were larger than the soapier series from the CW and Fox, but were also much less overdetermined and overproduced than the core MCU series. Daredevil vs. Kingpin, Jessica Jones vs. Kilgrave: They were compelling conflicts that brought previously underrated characters to new heights.

Penguin isn't quite in the same position as Jessica Jones – but Sofia is. Her dance with Oz feels new and exciting and genuinely uncertain, which is no small thing in a franchise as old and over-the-top as Batman's. Excluding the Caped Crusader from the series also seems like a wise decision; This series bets a lot on itself, on its own stakes. The penguin isn't begging for a second season or even its own movie, although we as viewers will inevitably do that – and the studios will inevitably oblige.