I’m still pretty damn skeptical about Pennyworth. While I can understand the thrill of a show like Gotham in which we see a young Bruce Wayne slowly becoming Batman, this seems like the reverse.
We begin with Alfred Pennyworth, badass SAS agent on all sorts of exciting adventures and watch him slowly become… a butler! I mean sure, he’s eventually Batman’s butler, which is cool, but it just sounds a bit anticlimactic for the hero to be destined to end up as a rich dude’s servant. Not to mention that there being something centered on the adventures of Alfred was one of the funnier gags in Teen Titans GO! To The Movies.
Anyhow, executive producer Bruno Heller must have given Epix one hell of an elevator pitch, because the show is currently shooting and is expected to air sometime this year. And here’s a new look at their stylish 60s mod Alfred:
Pretty snazzy turtleneck, eh? Perhaps conscious of Pennyworth being somewhat of a hard sell, Heller explained his vision for it on a TCA panel, saying:
“It’s really the chance to make him the center of a story and explain that journey: How did he get from being a young SAS soldier to being a butler in America? And it also gives us a chance to create a real world around him, a world in England that fits the whole DC universe.”
Heller then went on to say that he’s studying British characters like James Bond and Harry Potter to see what makes them tick.
“And both of those guys, and Alfred are basically working class guys doing the job. It’s like they’re being told what to do by other people in effect, and they make their own moral path by finding a way to be caught up in this much larger world, unlike the sort of Western heroes who go their own way and have showdowns in the street. These are people who answer to a boss and who are getting on a bus in the morning and going to work and coming home again and having to do things they don’t really understand the full implications of what they’re doing.
That’s sort of the essence of all of those espionage, spy movies, is that every time, you don’t really know who you’re serving, or whether you’re doing the right thing or the wrong thing. And you have to be able to keep a moral core for yourself without being able to say ‘Yes, I’ve saved the world,’ or ‘I’ve rescued 200 children on the bus that was about to fall into the river.’ It’s much more ambivalent than that.”
Uh, sure. I’m going to reserve judgment until I’ve actually seen the show, but the heroic adventures of a guy who doesn’t really understand what he’s doing and who is destined to become the person who cooks Batman’s dinner doesn’t sound like a gripping watch. But then again, I was 100% certain that Titans was going to be an embarrassing disaster and that turned out to be surprisingly watchable, so what do I know?
Tell us, are you psyched up for Pennyworth, or do you agree with me that it looks like a spinoff too far? Let us know in the comments section down below.
