I Watch TV: Pennyworth

 

Pennyworth

In an alternative 1960s ex-SAS soldier Alfred Pennyworth works as a bouncer at a London nightclub, though he dreams of having his own security business. He encounters Thomas Wayne, a wealthy American, and helps him with his sister Patricia and they exchange business cards. Wayne turns out to work for the CIA, half-heartedly acting against the fascist Raven Society, though mostly pursuing their own ends. He finds Pennyworth useful, bringing him in to assist with his contact Martha Kane, a photo journalist who is also working for the No-Name League*.

When Lord Harwood the leader of the Raven Society oversteps the mark, the Prime Minister has him disfigured and thrown out on the street**. He’s discovered by freelance enforcer Bet Sykes, and she and her sister Peg, a dominatrix, nurse him back to health. His return to power at the end of season 1, combined with Arthur, Alfred’s butler father, attempting to assassinate the Queen, brings forth a full scale civil war.

Season 2 takes place during the siege of London, though it seems a somewhat half-hearted siege as Alfie and friends keep sneaking in and out, and the city doesn’t have any major supply issues. Alfie spends a lot of time trying to get the money to let him and his friends leave England for America. In the end he finds himself having to stop a terror weapon, one that has unexpected side effects, leading to an outbreak of People With Enhancements (P W E).

This is one of the elements that comes to the fore in Season 3, set five years later. Rather than the early 60s style of the first two seasons, we go into the late 60s, along with psychedelic concepts, stranger drugs and weirder ideas. Several children make an appearance, which prefigures the show this is a spin off of – Gotham.

What then for Pennyworth, which they make clear in season 3 by subtitling it The Origin Of Batman’s Butler. In fact they move several other characters towards the Batman status quo more than Alfie himself. Thomas Wayne moves from forensic accountant and secret agent to doctor, and confronts his own father who is using experimental mind control technology for nefarious purposes. He and Martha Kane eventually get married and have a child – though not Bruce, not yet (this would presumably have Gotham set about 1980 if they cared about the continuity). More than this, Alfie’s Mum, Mary (Mrs P) becomes their Nanny. Alfie himself slowly comes to take more responsibility than just for himself. Yet the show ends, cancelled, before he ever gets there. So instead it’s a show about hanging about on the edge of the criminal underworld in the 1960s, occasionally remembering to fight fascists.

Watch This: Stylish 60s comic book thriller
Don’t Watch This: Lot of people failing to engage with the politics of a fake London

* The No-Name League are the left wing counterpart to the right wing Raven Society though we see even less of their actual politics and goals than the Raven Society. Both are run by posh Englishmen and -women who have more in common with each other than the rank and file of their groups. I don’t know if this is making a point.

** One of the things that makes this an alternative 1960s is public hangings and bodies hanging in cages. Nevertheless this seems as odd choice by the PM – this does not make an example as no one knows and indeed Lord Harwood has lost his own sense of identity. If the idea is to put fear into people by making him mysteriously vanish then 1. It doesn’t work (although Dr Gaunt, the new leader, does keep her identity secret for a while); and 2. Why not actually make him vanish? I appreciate of course that this is a comic book TV show, and indeed at two removes a Batman one so you need to create a villain with a gold nose, a limp, a grudge, and weird mental health problems, but this still seems a bit undermotivated.