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| Written by Steven Scott |
As a Bat-fan for life, I’ve been anticipating the arrival of Gotham ever since it was announced last year. TV was my first introduction to the world of Batman in the form of the Adam West series and while there have been multiple iterations of Batman on TV in animation since, it’s exciting to finally see these characters return to a live-action series.
Of course this is a decidedly different take on the city that produced Batman as by now everyone knows it’s a pre-Batman Gotham City. Instead, a young James Gordon will take the lead, putting the focus more on the Gotham’s police force as well as the criminal underworld. Joining Gordon is Detective Harvey Bullock, who was initially brought to my attention through the classic Batman: The Animated Series, and has been one of my favorite characters in the DCU ever since. Not everything in Gotham is black and white and Bullock lives definitively in the grey, not opposed to bend the rules to get results.
In anticipation of the series, I decided to take a look back at the award winning comic series, Gotham Central, which also puts the focus on Gotham’s finest (and not so finest) by the dynamic writing duo of Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka. While the show Gotham is not based on the comic series, it shares many characters and will hopefully borrow many elements from it since this is a series that many have claimed for years should get the serialized TV treatment.
Here’s what Gotham Central got right that I would love to see brought to life on screen in Gotham:
1. Keep the focus on the detectives and their personal lives.
Gotham Central did a great job of highlighting the detectives of the Major Crimes Unit and really delving into not only their cases, but also their home lives as well. We got to see what motivated them and how they related to their families and each other off duty. Allowing us a chance to get to know them made us care, so when someone caught a bullet, the affect it had on the audience was that much more impactful. Batman made appearances sporadically, which really added to his elusive façade.
With Bruce Wayne still a child in the show, there likely won’t be any costumed vigilantes to steal the spotlight away from the detectives (unless FOX throws a curveball at us and introduces Batwoman or something), so hopefully we’ll be able to get a fly-on-the-wall approach to their lives here as well.
It appears the criminal element will also be on prominent display with the origins of Gotham’s most notorious villains being a major part of the marketing, so perhaps they’ll split screen time equally but hopefully not to the point where neither side gets fleshed out.
2. Maintain an element of danger.
This is Gotham after all, one of the most dangerous cities in comics (remind me again why anyone would want to live there?). Like HBO’s The Wire, in Gotham Central, anyone could be killed off at anytime, and regularly did. While I’m not suggesting offing half your cast by the end of the first season, there ought to be a little bloodshed just to set the precedent for exactly what kind of city we’re dealing with while also letting the audience know that the stakes are higher here than perhaps your average police procedural.
Just whatever you do, don’t kill off Detectives Renee Montoya and Crispus Allen too soon. I’m really excited to see these characters develop onscreen and reach a wider audience.
3. Cameos are cool, but don’t overdo it.
While it’s cool to see characters from the extended DCU drop by to remind us this is part of a larger universe, this can also be distracting when it feels shoehorned in for sweeps and, in effect, take us out of the show. Thankfully, other than Batman’s rogues gallery, Gotham Central did it sparingly, keeping it more-or-less grounded.
Honestly, seeing the Teen Titans pop by the station did seem very out of place, so hopefully Gotham won’t resort to these types of stunts unless it actually makes sense for the story. Leave that to the CW’s Arrow and The Flash.
The question posed in Gotham Central is, which came first, the Batman or the freaks? Did the freaks necessitate the existence of Batman, who had to answer the call of duty in order to save Gotham, or does Batman’s very existence draw the freaks out? In the case of Gotham, it seems the former will be the case so it will be interesting to see how many villains are brought to life throughout the show. Which brings us to this…
4. Give us believable villains.
This is where Gotham, the show, should really take its cues from Gotham Central, the comic. What I really appreciated about the comic series is that it didn’t only rely on the freak of the week formula (or month, as it were) and some of the cases were just regular cases (for Gotham) where the investigation may involve questioning The Penguin or The Mad Hatter but they weren’t necessarily behind it. We know that the GCPD is one of the most corrupt departments in the country so I found it particularly interesting when they would turn their investigations inward and target a fellow officer.
That brings us to Jim Corrigan, a corrupt Crime Scene Investigator who is one of the most memorable villains of the whole series. I was surprised to see that NBC’s Constantine cast Jim Corrigan so I’m guessing that means we won’t be seeing him on Gotham, unless Corrigan (aka The Spectre) is the DC Comics equivalent of Quicksilver, but on the small screen. Or perhaps we’ll see the same actor pop up as Corrigan in both series (à la Michael Keaton in both Jackie Brown and Out of Sight).
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| Gotham’s Falcone, John Doman |
But back to my point, I’m not saying supernatural elements don’t have a place on this show (there are already plans to introduce Poison Ivy and even Mr. Freeze into the series, who as it happens was the first villain of Gotham Central), but all I’m saying is let’s keep it simple before we throw in Man-Bat. Having said that, the fact that Carmine Falcone and The Penguin, as well as new addition, mob boss Fish Mooney, are some of the earliest villains, I’d say we’re getting off to a good start.
Having said THAT, I would love to see villains like Freeze and Ivy redeemed in live-action and I think if done right, Clayface could be amazing in live-action too. And PLEASE don’t conclude this series before giving us your version of Scarface and the Ventriloquist!
5. Don’t let the fans dictate the show’s direction.
At the risk of negating everything I just said, fanboys are rabid and they’re very vocal. I’m not telling showrunner Bruno Heller anything he doesn’t already know, but it’s a fact that no previous show he’s ever worked on has had this kind of heat on it to “get it right” prior to debuting (I seriously doubt historians were trolling the Rome message boards).
When Gotham was first announced, it was revealed that the show was to focus on a young James Gordon and no mention of Bruce Wayne was made. A lot of the immediate internet reaction was “how can you do a Batman show without Batman?” It wasn’t too long after that they announced that Bruce Wayne had been added to the cast. Now whether this was always a part of the plan or whether it was a studio note is hard to say… but if a couple of my most respected showrunners, Batman: The Animated Series’ Bruce Timm and Community’s Dan Harmon are anything to go by, studio notes should be just as quickly discarded as they are dispensed and your show will be better for it.
Hopefully Heller has a clear idea of where his show is headed and sticks with it.
Honestly, I would be a little more excited if Gotham were debuting on HBO since the Gotham Central comic series felt like The Wire meets Gotham, or perhaps even AMC, as I could see it filling the gritty space that Breaking Bad previously occupied. For something like this, I understand them wanting to reach the widest audience possible so as long as FOX doesn’t do what they do best and cancel this prematurely, hopefully Gotham will enjoy a good, solid run.
