A good start: The first episode of HBO’s ‘The Penguin’ shows promise

I just re-watched The Sopranos, and I was primed for another good mobster epic. HBO’s The Penguin doesn’t look like it will be quite up to that level, but the first episode of this eight-part miniseries looks pretty good.

An unrecognizable Colin Farrell, buried in amazing makeup, reprises the role of the title character, aka Oz Cobb, that he played in The Batman. The series picks up right after the events of that film, but Robert Pattinson’s Batman is not involved other than a brief mention. This is a Penguin story, and it looks like Pattinson is being saved for the movies. (A sequel to The Batman is still two years away.)

There’s nothing remarkable about the first hour of the series other than Farrell’s performance, but the setup—involving a dead mob captain and his sister Sofia (Cristin Milioti); she’s known in the comics as The Hangman—is promising enough. Farrell gives Oz some surprising dimension, making the character far more than a one-note villain.

The Penguin will give Farrell a nice chance to dive into the character outside of the cinematic schedule. It’s a fun character in a familiar story, and the first episode was good enough to leave me curious for more.

There are seven episodes to go as of this writing, and The Penguin is off to a decent start, but it’s hard to judge a series based on one episode.

I might put an update in the comments once I’ve seen more.

The Penguin is airing on HBO, with new episodes released on Sundays through Nov. 10.

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