Be Excellent To Each Other

Just watched the pilot over lunch. It was.... alright.

It's very Smallville/Arrow/Agents of Shield in tone and feel. It remains to be seen if it turns out to be a monster of the week kind of show, but I very much suspect it will be. I was hoping for something closer to "True Detective" but set in Gotham, as I thought it was supposed to be this gritty realist take on the origin of the Batman Story. It certainly isn't that, it's just seems to be another superhero based, seen it all before, show. Albeit without the actual superhero.

Having said that, it was perfectly watchable, and will probably be up there with the best of these type of shows.

It does have a few issues:

The sums of the angles of that rectangle are too monstrous to contemplate.

So, absolute dogshit then?

That's a bit harsh, Marvel got good towards the end of the first series, and Smallville had its moments.

I thought it was OK.

I gather it is deliberately set in an impossible time period, which is probably better than setting it in present day.

Casting is a bit of a mixed bag. I think Ben McKenzie was a good choice for Gordon, doesn't matter so much if he is just a generic "man with unflinching desire to do the right thing" if he's got other interesting characters to bounce off. Don't think Sean Pertwee is a great choice for Alfred, and in the first episode at least he was a bit one note. The guy they've got playing Penguin seems great for the role. I don't really like Jada Pinkett Smith, but I'll give her a chance.

Feels a lot to more like they've tried to shoehorn "Batman" into the format of a regular crime procedural more than they have tried to make a show about superheroes.

If it's got legs, I wonder how close to Batman they will actually get.

Tone wise if feels pretty similar to the Nolan movies. Not directly connected to them, but feels like they could be (even if it's obviously a much lower budget).

Episode 2 was much better I thought

Arse missed it

Does anyone remember Birds of Prey from about ten years or so back?

Young catwoman looks incredibly similar to Huntress in that.

Binged on the rest of the aired episodes while I was ill the past few days.
It really bloody good! It's gritty, it's complex , it's not a monster of the week show that I expected it to be. It's very well acted, has a great storyline and actually manages to throw up a few surprises along the way, considering the source material.
At it's heart, it's really a show about The Penguin...

I dunno about the show overall. It's a real mess tonally, with silly masked villain antics side by side with pretty brutal stuff. I'm not too invested in Gordon, I would also really like to see The Penguin getting more prominence (he's the best thing in the show imo). For me, I think it would benefit from embracing the sillier over the top stuff a bit more.

I find Gordon very boring and agree The Penguin is what the show really hangs on. I'm not entirely sure what Fish is all about but hey there you go.

I stopped watching it after about four episodes because, as Lewie says, it's all over the place. It doesn't have the slightest idea whether it wants to be serious police procedural or a creche for pantomime performances and for every story point it puts out that draws you in it pushes you away with stuff like Jada Pinkett Smith's hammy bullshit, or the sub-soap opera nonsense between Montoya and Gordon's fiancé. Even the stuff with The Penguin--which I agree is the most interesting aspect of the show, and seeing him claw his way up the ranks is a great hook for a show that is essentially the origin story for Gotham itself--has enough of a whiff of scenery chewing am-dram bullshit to ensure I could never fully buy into it. I realise as I type that these are weird accusations to be chucking at something which plays with comic book characters, but if recent years have proved anything it's that you can present this kind of stuff in a way that credibly balances the mundane with the fantastical without either side being a liability and Gotham keeps dropping that ball in my opinion.

I felt pretty much like that at the 4 episode mark but then I went back and scanned through episodes 4-9 and it got me hooked. I try to view it as something not exactly connected with Batman in the end... odd though that may seem. Try to view it as its own entity as a city with some very weird people in it. Gets more interesting that way.

I'm not really bothered about the Batman connection at all and am happy to just watch it, or not, on it's own merits. Even at that though it's just utterly unbalanced and I just can't buy into it when it's so all over the place.

Yeah, I stopped too after about episode 4, with the same thoughts, but illness made me push through and binge on the rest, and it really gets a lot better mid season.

I agree it gets more entertaining later on, but it still has problems.

I've been enjoying it anyway. Some things are a bit all over the place, but I think it's just going to get better and better over time once they figure out what they are doing.

I'm putting my hat into the ring as well, saying this is good. Sure, it's taken a while to find its feet and yes it was a bit all over the place to start, but now the characters are better established it's really very entertaining. Also, it looks amazing if you can get it in HD. The cinematography is very very good and the locations look brilliant.