Batman who? Why The Penguin is TV’s biggest surprise of the year

Colin Farrell’s show-stopping turn, and a scene-stealing Cristin Milioti, make this DC crime series an unlikely winner

HBO’s DC show The Penguin is one of those rare treats that comes along almost completely unexpectedly, like Batman cracking a smile, or Harley Quinn making sensible life choices. Nobody really expected a show about the second banana in the dark knight’s famed rogue’s gallery to be up to much even if Colin Farrell’s performance, under all those prosthetics, in The Batman was a startlingly grimy diversion from the gloomy glamour of Matt Reeves’s elegant vision of Gotham City’s proto dark knight. But an entire series based on Oswald Cobb’s bloody rise through the ranks of Gotham City’s lurid underworld always seemed a little superfluous to the main event, a spiky little sideshow to keep us entertained, deep down in the gutter with a villainous Humpty Dumpty, while DC works out what to do with the highfalutin’ sequel.

Past the season’s midway point, and it’s clear it’s more than just filler, and could yet be DC’s most unexpected hit since Aquaman turned murmuring sweet nothings to swordfish into a billion-dollar box office splash. Farrell, who at times looks like Danny DeVito on a diet of gas station sushi and sheer spite, is clearly having so much fun as the Penguin that it might even make up for having to sit for three hours to undergo his daily transformation. This was supposed to be a novelty, the chance to see the Oscar nominee literally disappear into the role of Gotham’s most likable dirty little rat, but the twists, turns and power struggles are so fast and fabulous that spending each episode trying to spot the handsome Irishman underneath all that silicone would be like attending a Vegas magic show just to figure out how the rabbit got in the hat.