Gotham Season Three
Holy bat’s-arse craziness!
released 28 august 2016-2017 | 15 | Blu-ray/dVd Showrunner Bruno Heller Cast Ben McKenzie, donal logue, robin lord taylor, david Mazouz
Right in the middle of season three we get to see exactly the show Gotham should always be. The season is split into three mini-arcs, the second of which is a brief, three-episode return-ofthe-Joker storyline. And it’s magnificent. Tense, edgy, shocking, psychedelic and blackly comic, it’s Gotham at its best.
But Gotham seems perversely determined not to spoil its viewers by actually giving them what they want. After three series of Joker teases – which have always been the highlights of this Batman origin show – you’d think they’d finally let us enjoy the Clown Prince of Crime for an extended period. But no, once again he’s used sparingly in a season that instead forces us to endure a deadly dull version of the Mad Hatter (a kind of soya milk Joker) episode after episode for the first arc of the year.
The interactions between Penguin and the Riddler are fun throughout as usual, but they seem to be involved in their own soap opera, independent from the main plot. Having Penguin crush on Nygma is a gutsy and fun move, but the spurned lover revenge plot that follows feels woefully stretched by the end of the season.
Meanwhile the show’s protagonist Jim Gordon starts the run in an interesting place – having quit GCPD to become a bounty hunter – but he’s soon back on the force, making such morally dubious decisions you can’t help wondering if the show’s final joke will be having Gordon become Batman with Bruce as his Robin.
Gotham is never terrible, but most episodes are a frustrating mishmash of inspired lunacy, shocking revelations, deliciously dark humour, dumb character choices, risibly written female characters, and bloated ongoing storylines – God, the abductedBruce plot feels like it goes on forever. But just occasionally this version of the Dark Knight rises to the occasion.
Extras The Gotham panel from San Diego Comic-Con 2016; features on the show’s new villains, the Court of Owls and star Ben McKenzie’s directorial debut; deleted scenes. Dave Golder
The Riddler’s cellphone ringtone is the jingle used between scene changes in the ’60s Batman TV series.