No Bat-signal, no Batmobile, no Batm… well, you get the idea. 75 years on from the Caped Crusader’s first appearance in Detective Comics #27, Gotham joins the recent wave of comic book stories on TV: Arrow, Agents of SHIELD, The Flash, Constantine and The Walking Dead. Just as Smallville mined Superman’s teenage years with a no-capes, no-flying policy, Gotham is set in the days before Batman Begins, the dark nights before the Dark Knight; if Batman is a story about one man trying to save a city, Gotham is the story of why that city needed saving.
But if you’re worried that there’s a Bat-shaped hole here, what Gotham does have is Batman’s city, and it’s teeming with larger-than-life criminals, dancing on the edge of chaos. This is neo-noir pulp TV, pumped full of references to Bob Kane and Bill Finger’s enduring creation from 1939 – whether it’s a young cat burglar stealing milk and wallets; a sadistic henchman with a penguin-like waddle in his walk; a CSI crime boffin who can’t resist framing every question as a riddle; or a nervous comedian auditioning dark jokes in a seedy nightclub (more on him later).
Chances are, you’ll know the bare bones of the Batman story: orphaned son of millionaire parents grows up to be a masked vigilante. What Gotham does is to rewind to the scene of the crime: the murder of Martha and Thomas Wayne in front of their young son Bruce. “The murders of the Waynes were like this nuclear bomb that transforms the city and the people in it – there’s a ripple effect as heroes and villains fall and rise,” explains Geoff Johns (chief creative officer at DC Entertainment, and a respected comics writer in his own right).
For British showrunner Bruno Heller (Rome, The Mentalist) Gotham is a way to explore the birth of all the great villains, as well as the childhood of Bruce Wayne (played by David Mazouz). “I love origin stories,” he says, “it’s a bit like seeing old photos of your parents before you were born: it illuminates things in a different, fresh way.” The story explores what sort of upbringing could create Batman. Gotham’s Alfred – played by Sean Pertwee – is “ex-military, a tough as nails Marine, fierce protector to the young master Bruce”, rather than the camp fusspot in a tux. Their relationship shows “how instrumental Alfred is to his upbringing – in many respects he’s his enabler,” he says. “By episode seven you’ll see this huge change – not at liberty to discuss it – where you’ll see flashes of the man the boy is to become.”
There’s a timeless feel here; the streets and skyscrapers are filmed in 50 shades of black with the occasional splash of colour – a neon-blasted Chinatown, the scarlet highlights in Fish Mooney’s hair (Jada Pinkett Smith). It’s filled with what Heller calls the “scary glamour” of a city that’s “anarchic, magnetic, sensual, brutal – where you feel both small and large”; it’s also full of anachronistic details: “the clothes are everything from the 1930s to the 80s, 90s; they use phones and computers; the cars are 1960s and 70s, it’s a period mash-up which means that hopefully everyone gets a sense of the past,” Heller adds.
Fellow Brit Danny Cannon, who directed the pilot and is the show’s executive producer, continues: “It’s myself and Bruno’s love song to the New York of Sidney Lumet, [William] Friedkin, the beauty of the graffiti and the grime, the way the Bronx was, the way Brooklyn was. There’s an unpredictable beauty to something that’s crumbling from within and is allowing the lunatics to run the asylum.” They’re shooting on location in New York (the “real Gotham”), but even so, Cannon says “it’s a little harder to find Gotham within New York right now, because New York is gentrified … it’s hard to find those alleyways and back doorways.”
What is it about the Batman story that is so potent? “I have a hard time imagining a character who’s had as many stories written about them,” says Johns, “between the comic books and the films, the games, TV; it’s psychological, it’s emotional, I think that’s why it resonates. He’s a mythic folktale, the ultimate masked vigilante.”
For Ben McKenzie, who plays Gotham’s rookie cop James Gordon, “it’s endured for 75 years because every teenager can relate to feeling like an outsider and wanting to get revenge on a world that feels unfair to them. We all keep some part of that teenage fighter mentality with us through the rest of our lives.” Unlike most superhero stories, Heller says, Batman is about will power; Bruce Wayne “wills himself into the shape of superhero, it’s almost aspirational; you can’t hope to be bitten by a radioactive spider or come from another planet”, but with “enough discipline and commitment” you can become Batman. “It’s also that fantasy of the ‘ethical use of violence’,” Heller suggests “which used to be cowboys – where there’s no law, you had to make your own law – a very American trope, but it resonates everywhere, he’s as powerful a figure in the Philippines as he is everywhere.”
“As a fan it’s super exciting – we just had a Guardians of the Galaxy movie, we’re going to have Firestorm in the Flash TV show, there’s a show about Constantine, now there’s a show about Gotham that’s going to explore all these villains.” In the pilot we meet the people who will become Catwoman, the Riddler, Poison Ivy and the Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor very much steals the show), with Nicholas D’Agosto (Masters Of Sex) also announced as Gotham’s Harvey Dent (aka Two-Face). That just leaves the Clown Prince of Crime. Will the nervy comedian we see on stage in Fish Mooney’s nightclub turn out to be the Joker? Cannon keeps his cards close: “We’re exploring under every rock for possible contenders – are all our candidates carved in stone right now? No…” Heller is more forthcoming. “The Joker is the crown jewel of Batman villains, we’ll be careful about how we introduce him. It’s very likely that the Joker will be on screen for some time before people realise, ‘Oh jeez, that’s the Joker!’ He’ll be along sooner rather than later.”
• Gotham starts in the UK on 13 October, Channel 5
• This article was amended on 9 October. Bruno Heller, not Bruce Heller, is the showrunner. Ben McKenzie, not Ben MacKenzie, is the star.
