THE PENGUIN: Season 1 Episode 1

Let's be honest about both halves of this one. The Penguin is superbly made — four-star craft by any measure. Colin Farrell and Cristin Milioti give remarkable performances, the cinematography leans hard into a gritty noir beauty, and the story pulls you forward. Fans of Batman and the crime genre will find plenty to admire.

But admiration isn't the whole question. This premiere is soaked in extreme violence — shootings, a man stabbed in the eye and struck by a bus, a torture scene, a mutilated corpse — and buried under dozens of obscenities, including 27 "f" words in a single episode. Every character lives by the same rule: take what you want, hurt whoever's in the way.

So here's our answer. However skilled the filmmaking, the source advises extreme caution for all viewers — and a −3 leaves us no room to send you into this Gotham. Skip it.

Gotham is reeling. In the wreckage left by the Riddler's terrorist attack and the murder of crime boss Carmine Falcone, the city's underworld is up for grabs.

Oz "The Penguin" Cobb has spent his life working for the Falcone family — but he wants more than a seat at the table. With Falcone's son Alberto poised to inherit the empire, Oz sees an opening, and he's willing to take it by any means necessary. What follows is one long, dangerous night of ambition in a city with no rules.

Four stars, and they're honestly earned. This is television made at the highest level. Craig Zobel's Gotham is a gorgeous, decaying noir, and the cinematography sells every shadow of it. Farrell disappears into Oz, and Milioti matches him — these are the kind of performances that make a series feel inevitable.

The writing knows what it's doing, too. The plot is a tightly wound scheme that compels you forward, and a few humorous beats nod affectionately to the show's comic-book roots without breaking the spell. For fans of Batman or hardboiled crime storytelling, the craft here is close to impeccable.

That's precisely why the content matters so much. A lesser show would be easy to dismiss. This one is genuinely excellent — and still not something we can recommend you watch.

The Penguin lives in a thoroughly pagan world, and it never pretends otherwise. Every character acts purely out of self-interest, chasing money, power, or respect, and none of them hesitates to hurt or kill when it serves the goal. There is no moral center holding this Gotham together — only appetite.

The source does note two faint glimmers. Oz spares a young man's life after forcing him to help hide a body, and he shows a rough tenderness toward his mother, who suffers hallucinations of his brothers, implied to have died as children. But these flickers of humanity are set inside a life built on deceit, blackmail, and murder. Oz lies repeatedly, manipulates a teenager into a life of crime, and frames a rival family for a killing he committed. The series shows us evil clearly; it does not judge it.

That's the sobering thing about a story like this: it renders a world where everyone worships himself, and it renders it beautifully. Scripture names that world exactly — "the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils" (1 Timothy 6:10). The Penguin dramatizes the root and lets the film grow. It offers no light to answer the darkness it stages so well.

The Penguin is a genuinely excellent piece of television — and that's exactly what makes it hard to set down and important that we do. Extreme violence, torture, a flood of profanity, and a world with no moral floor add up to a −3, and the source urges caution for everyone. So our answer stands: skip it. Looking for something to watch together instead? Try our latest family-friendly picks.