Colin Farrell’s Penguin ditches Batman, and is all the better for it

The Penguin ★★★½
Binge, Friday

Sometimes absence is an opportunity. The Penguin is a spin-off from the 2022 superhero movie The Batman. It is set a week after the blockbuster’s story concluded in a cataclysmic reckoning, but it does not feature Robert Pattinson’s caped crusader in any material way. And it’s all the better for it. In focusing on Colin Farrell’s bulky gangland lieutenant, Oswald Cobblepot, aka The Penguin, the series thankfully finds its own pulpy purpose as a gangland saga built around a pair of compelling lead performances.

The Penguin (Colin Farrell), right, moulds his young sidekick Victor (Rhenzy Feliz) through both fear and reward. Credit: Binge

Anyone who has endured the often-tepid spin-off series culled from the Marvel Cinematic Universe will be delighted at how self-contained and thorny these eight episodes are. Starting from a franchise-driven directive, creator Lauren LeFranc (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) nods to Batman lore and Penguin’s eclectic history, but there are also plenty of mob movie grace notes, particularly from The Godfather and Goodfellas, while there’s a juicy edge to Farrell’s turn that calls up black-and-white era hoods such as James Cagney.

His face scarred, hobbling because of a stirrup on his leg, Oswald is a mid-level guy in the Falcone crime family. Being underestimated is his superpower; decisions driven by anger his Kryptonite. With his boss killed during The Batman, Oswald wants to climb to the top, preferably over the bodies of his superiors. The plot gives him a sidekick, Victor Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz), a working-class teen from one of the many Gotham City neighbourhoods left ruined by The Batman’s finale. Oswald moulds him through both fear and reward.

The Penguin’s unhinged foil: Cristin Milioti plays Sofia Falcone.Credit: Binge

As a protagonist, Oswald is flawed in ways that make sense as his life unfolds. He’s rat cunning, but not always strategic. You’re never sure whether he’s freelancing or following a masterplan. But he also has an unhinged foil in Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), the daughter of Oswald’s murdered don and newly released from the city’s Arkham Asylum. Resembling Talia Shire’s Connie Corleone from The Godfather, Sofia operates at a frightening pitch. Lashing out is how she holds herself together after a lifetime of trauma.

Oswald is an underdog, ruthless but also a little starry-eyed about the gangster’s place in the world. Farrell finds all the corners of his humanity, some unexpected, which the show ties into with childhood flashbacks and an influential mother. None of this is groundbreaking, and the direction is spotty, but it’s delivered with thought-through vigour, simpatico performances, and technical muscle – Gotham feels like a city on the verge of collapse. Given the bleak corporate necessities that kick-started this show, the capable finished result is close to a small miracle.

Distant sisters reunite as their ailing father’s death looms in His Three Daughters: (from left) Natasha Lyonne, Elizabeth Olsen and Carrie Coon. Credit: Netflix via AP

His Three Daughters ★★★★
Netflix, Friday

It’s Chekhov in a New York apartment. Spanning a few final, fraught days, this bittersweet but elusive independent feature follows a trio of distant sisters reunited in their family home as their ailing father’s death looms. Katie (Carrie Coon) is officious and demanding, Christina (Elizabeth Olsen) is conciliatory but self-absorbed, and Rachel (Natasha Lyonne), who has been caring for their father for years, is lodged between stoned and shocked. They can’t face what they’re losing but don’t know what they have.

Filmmaker Azazel Jacobs has made some good films, such as 2020’s French Exit, but this is his first great one. The outline is archetypal, but there’s a distinct friction and tender eye at each turn. The framing is as initially jarring as the sister’s energy, with the camera defining the interiors. The dying patriarch, Vincent (Jay O. Sanders), is barely seen, putting the focus on his daughters and the hospice procedures explained to them by visiting professionals.

The storytelling is never schematic. The divide between the three women, and the uncertain bridging, feels lodged in the granular. That makes for an actor’s showcase, and all three leads deliver exceptional performances that are linked; they’re mysteries to themselves but silently understand each other. His Three Daughters tells us what we need to know without ever saying too much. The restraint is sublime.

Alexandra Roach as government cyber expert Abby Aysgarth in Nightsleeper.Credit: Stan

Nightsleeper
Stan

If Apple TV+’s Idris Elba airborne thriller Hijack somehow didn’t move fast enough for you, this British drama about a digitally hijacked train hurtles along so fast it can barely stay on the story’s track. Joe Cole (Peaky Blinders) is the off-duty police officer on a Glasgow-to-London service who must work with a government cyber expert, Abby Aysgarth (Alexandra Roach), to regain control of the runaway train and identify the culprits. The goal is to move faster than your sense of plausibility, and the limited series mostly succeeds.

Lambert Wilson in La Maison, which can be considered as a lesser Succession, but with better stitching.Credit: Apple TV+

La Maison
Apple TV+

After the period biopic The New Look, Apple returns to the world of Parisian haute couture with this contemporary French language drama about the machinations inside and out of a revered, family-run fashion brand that is left tottering when its patriarch and chief designer goes viral in all the wrong ways. From an initial sampling, the intent is to mix 1 per cent glamour with some melodramatic machinations – think a lesser Succession but with better stitching. If nothing else it’s a welcome antidote to Emily in Paris. These characters can actually afford those Eiffel Tower views.

One Street Away
Shelter

“Housing crisis” has a different meaning in different countries. As this telling documentary reveals, in the Argentinean capital of Buenos Aires, it takes the form of “spatial inequality”. Several million residents have obtained housing through the “informal market”. The result is satellite shanty towns and high-rise tenements constructed on the fly with substandard materials, both lacking in basic public amenities and promoting division. Director Reed Purvis mixes academic insight with on the ground testimony, as communities organise to gain access to what they need against sometimes overwhelming intransigence.

Toks Olagundoye, Kelsey Grammer and Nicholas Lyndhurst in Frasier: the haughty psychiatrist has barely lost a step.Credit: Paramount+

Frasier (season 2)
Paramount+

Starting with a series of misunderstandings in the lead-up to Valentine’s Day, the new episode from the second season of the classic sitcom’s revival has much the same jury-rigged feel as the first. Kelsey Grammer’s portrayal of his haughty psychiatrist has barely lost a step, but the supporting players in this now Boston-set comedy too often fail to transition from pithy outline on the page to plausible foils. There’s a little too much urgency in some of the dialogue delivery – some of the cast don’t have the confidence of their predecessors.

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