TV Review – Pennyworth

It’s A Right Royal Cockney Barrel of Monkeys

Today we discuss a completely demented TV show that is so British it may never be shown on British TV. Pennyworth (???) is currently being broadcast in the US but plans for showing it here seem a bit sketchy; an unusually timid Radio Times has gone so far to say it will someday be shown on an online something called Starzplay. Never heard of Starzplay? Funny that.

Pennyworth, in case you didn’t know, is the family name of Batman’s faithful butler Alfred, as played on screen multiple times by Michael Caine in the Christopher Nolan trilogy. “Know your limits, Master Wayne.” Yes, that was the wrinkled retainer’s catchphrase.

In the TV show Pennyworth – a fever dream offshoot of the Batman-as-a-kid show Gotham – Alfred is still a young man in the 1960s, fresh out of the army and trying to find a living on civvy street. Or Carnaby Street anyway. He’s played by Jack Bannon, sporting the best widow’s peak since Ray Reardon.

Bannon plays Alfred Pennyworth as if he was played by Michael Caine in a very weird version of the sixties. The Michael Caine that only did movies like The Ipcress Files and Alfie. Alfred’s ex-SAS mates (oh yes, he’s an ex-SAS badass in this version of his origins) call him ‘Alfie’.

What’s it all about? This show fetishizes Michael Caine in the same way Guy Ritchie did in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, where all four of the main characters spent the entire movie doing impressions of Michael Caine. It’s a right royal cockney barrel of monkeys.

Anyway, have I mentioned how bonkers this version of the sixties is? There are public executions broadcast on television. One of those executed is Jimmy Savile. A regular character is the Queen, clearly based on the sexy young version from The Crown played by Clare Foy. She has feelings about Alfie Pennyworth.

There is also pop star Paloma Faith playing a henchwoman so Northern she could be propping up the bar of the Rover’s Return in black and white. She has a Myra Hindley look and must be completely unintelligible to an American audience. “Never mind t’ petrol money. Will th’ reimburse me? Will th’ ‘eck.” Polly Walker plays her Madam of a sister, who is clearly based on Cynthia Payne (one for the teenagers there).

This is clearly the work of someone who has read too much Alan Moore, particularly his work on the latter issues of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen wherein Harry Potter turns out to be the antichrist and only Mary Poppins can stop him.

Each episode of Pennyworth has upped the weird. In the US they’re six episodes into a ten episode series and we’ve only just been introduced to Aleister Crowley. He turns out to be a friend of a friend of Martha King and Thomas Wayne, AKA Batman’s future parents.

“Satan is love,” declares Crowley to Martha at a typically decadent country house party at which various members of the Rolling Stones are presumably present. To prove this to her he introduces her to Satan himself. Bruce Wayne’s mum wakes up naked in the middle of nowhere the next morning, which puts a new spin on Batman’s parentage.

Yes, this was all written and expensively filmed to be put on TV. They must have stuck half of King’s Cross up their hooters. But we haven’t even reached peak bonkers yet. There’s a rift that has split the country into two factions (remind you of anything?) called the Raven Society and the No Name Group. Each faction is a different shade of fascist although the heads of these two factions are played by National Treasures Anna Chancellor and Sarah Alexander.

Back to Alfie, who has been trying to find out who ‘fridged’ his fiance two episodes earlier – to use the modern parlance of killing a female character to motivate the ‘hero’. He gets advice from feared East End ganglord and probable cannibal John Ripper that he needs to visit the even-more-feared Baroness Ortsey in Bethlehem Hospital (AKA Bedlam). This Baroness is locked up like Hannibal Lector and is played by, and I shit you not, Felicity Kendal. Somebody’s living the good life.

Watching Pennyworth feels like being constantly trolled; just when you think they can’t up the bizarre they play Papa’s Got a Brand New Pigbag on a show supposedly set in the sixties.

This review is brought to you because I think there may be ructions if it were ever shown in this country. Aside from the depictions of Hindley, Savile and the Queen (gawd bless her!), the Prime Minister is also a regular character, a mustachioed establishment-type clearly based on an amalgam of Anthony Eden and Harold MacMillan. Oh, and he also oversees the violent torture of undesirables.

The tabloid press might have a field day with all this, which might explain the reticence to show it; but perhaps it could become some kind of camp classic? Let’s be clear, this is not a good show with regards to quality. The titles aim for the classic ITC look of the era, although in reality they look more like Monty Python’s parody The Bishop.

If you’re already so much out of new ideas that you have to impregnate Batman’s mum with Satan’s seed after six episodes, you might want to dial it down a bit. Much like Batman itself, or the works of Alan Moore, Pennyworth probably should have stayed on the printed page.

But feel free to join with me in speculating what could possibly happen next. Harold Wilson has got glass legs? Mick Jagger secretly negotiated Britain’s entry into the EU? Princess Margaret turns up in the latest Fast and Furious film? And Graham LeSaux. Fiction is much stranger than truth.