You’ve watched Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Orange is the New Black, House of Cards, Fargo and True Detective but the question remains, what the hell do I download – ahem, buy the DVD for – next?
First and foremost, if you haven’t seen any of the above your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to do so. Stop reading right this moment and make for Netflix, Amazon, Google Play or The Pirate Bay and get it done.
For those of you on our elite level of couch viewing, you’ve long suspected you’re better than those plebs who are only catching on to GOT and BB now and we’re here to tell you that you’re right. And that there’s only one word you need to know – Gotham. It’s been the most hyped new show all summer in the States and on Monday it made its debut on Fox, setting itself up as the must-watch /download show this next few months.
It’s gritty and campy, kind of like the old Tim Burton Batman movies in the late 1980s and early 1990s but with a stronger story and not quite as cartoony. It goes a long way to recreating the Batman hey day of the 1990s when all you wanted for Christmas was your parents to take you to Movie World on the Gold Coast before you got stuck in lines for hours on end only to find out The Batman Adventure ride was broken – just like your heart soon would be.
It’s set before Bruce Wayne becomes Batman, focusing on Gotham and its corrupt police force and rampant crime. Gotham is a city dominated by organized crime, petty thefts and murders. And we open on that defining Batman moment – of a 10-year-old Bruce Wayne’s parents being shot and killed in an alley after a movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xjn_n4ixpMo&index=1&list=PLr5xdVw1KkGuuEf7zD_wFy_jOpJhaRk6D
It’s baby Batman. And we also witness the early incarnations of some of our favourite characters – Commissioner Jim Gordon as a goody two-shoes rookie, Penguin as a 20-something who looks likes his nose has been bridge-deep in drugs for a good couple years and a seven-year-old Poison Ivy, whose father is framed by an organized crime mob and killed by Gordon and his senior cop. It makes you feel like a wee genius every time you spot the young version of would-be criminals.
It’s familiar. It’s fun. And it’s got the bad ass Ryan dude from The O.C in it as Commissioner Gordon. No signs of Marissa but. And there are also some babes and some lesbian sexual tension for good measure. Hell, bisexuality is a requirement for any show to make it these days – half of the shows in the opening paragraph feature cross-code sex scenes. And quite frankly, we’re all for it.
So what are you waiting for? Makeout with the person closest to you and get watching, god dammit.
