The Penguin Is Following HBO’s Formula for Prestige TV Success
Photo: HBO
The strongest sign that The Penguin, the TV spinoff of 2022’s The Batman, would be a good show was when it was announced that the series would switch from Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming service Max to become an HBO original series. The decision was likely a combination of the generally confusing identity of Max to the public consumer and the desire to hitch The Penguin onto a brand name that has historically stood for being the peak of premium TV and that launched the Golden Age of modern television: HBO.
From the start Max—formerly HBO Max—has embraced its parent company’s comic book property in live action. Shortly after launching, HBO Max was home to the extremely funny John Cena led Peacemaker. They became the home for shows from the earlier DC Universe streaming service, like the dark Titans and the unpredictable Doom Patrol. But The Penguin marks DC Studios’ first major attempt at prestige TV, and DC’s first major TV launch after recently coming under James Gunn’s creative leadership.
For the past 20 years live action DC TV was dominated by the offerings on The WB and later The CW. Smallville and the Arrowverse embraced the lighter side of comic books with adventure-of-the-week 22 episode seasons (remember those?) and large casts. Even when the shows took a darker or more serious edge, like the earlier seasons of Arrow or even aspects of Black Lightning and Batwoman, there was always a strong connection to the story structure of comic books that embraced one-off villains and The CW’s famous interpersonal melodramas.
The Penguin breaks with tradition and fully embraces a newer era of TV, an era that originated with HBO. HBO was the American network that pioneered shorter seasons with late ‘90s shows like The Sopranos and Oz. The episodes are longer since there are no commercial breaks, now a standard practice among streaming shows. But The Penguin falling under the HBO heading also shows a clear alignment with the series’ creative direction: emulating HBO’s past to make it fit in with its present.
The most obvious HBO comparison for The Penguin is The Sopranos. Besides focusing on mobsters operating in a major city, both series build themselves around a central criminal figure in the context of his personal relationships. Within the Falcone family we see a crime family fighting for leadership as well as fighting the family roles built up within the machismo mafia society.
The other major HBO inspiration is Boardwalk Empire. Both series embrace the aesthetics of dark seedy corruption and main characters who are defined by their own power-hungry ambitions. While the series didn’t receive the same level of popularity as The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire helped support HBO’s identity as the premiere destination for gritty, detailed dramas. I’m sure The Penguin also drew inspiration from the format of a crime show starring a beloved and critically acclaimed character actor who doesn’t shy away from weirdo roles.
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