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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
29
Mixed:
12
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
Sep 19, 2024
Season 1 Review:
Every character in Gotham City besides the Penguin, Sofia and Cobb’s mother is paper-thin (that unfortunately includes Vic, Cobb’s destitute sidekick, who doubles as his main interlocutor). If, on the other hand, “The Penguin” sticks to just this one season, I’d call it interesting but imperfect. The finale feels like a cliffhanger, not a conclusion, and the show’s boldest experiment (in genre terms) is just getting off the ground.
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The IndependentSep 12, 2024
SlashfilmSep 12, 2024
Season 1 Review:
If "The Penguin" is worth watching at all, it's to see the lead performances from Farrell and Milioti, whose Sofia is more or the less the co-lead character. Even when the story they're stuck in lets them down, these two performers rise to the challenge and do exemplary work.
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The TelegraphSep 12, 2024
Sep 18, 2024
Season 1 Review:
You must be content with a standard-issue mob turf war TV series, with thick overtones of "The Sopranos," as heavy and as gloppily applied as all that clay weighing down Farrell. This "Penguin" is a proximate real world, and not even a slightly heightened version of one, with no Batman and no fantasy world to escape to — or for it to escape to.
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Sep 17, 2024
Season 1 Review:
Oz’s prosthetics fit The Batman’s exaggeratedly gothic aesthetic to a tee, but they sometimes come off as a goofy intrusion in the otherwise realistic world of The Penguin. And there was an air of mystery and moral ambiguity to the shadow-lurking schemer Farrell played in the film. But as we watch him grunt his way through eight episodes of this series, that mystique quickly fades and he becomes just another player in just another run-of-the-mill mob story.
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Sep 20, 2024
Season 1 Review:
So while there are few if any real surprises, there are jolts, violent plot turns designed to shock and to deepen the emotional stakes. In the bleak, shallow context of the story, they play less as tragedy than as an off-putting moral vacuity. .... [Farrell] gives a modulated, fully committed, entirely professional performance. But it’s not a Colin Farrell performance. Adopting a grating New York-ish accent, he does a meticulous job of channeling gangster icons like De Niro, Pacino and Gandolfini.
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Sep 19, 2024
Season 1 Review:
Milioti’s performance and agile, noir-tinged directing from talented collaborators like filmmaker Craig Zobel (Z for Zachariah, Compliance) and TV veteran Helen Shaver (Station Eleven, Maid) aside, its greatest asset is the utter ferocity of LeFranc’s finale. But without the moral nuance that made The Sopranos so ripe for rumination and debate, getting there is a slog, weighed down by broad characters spewing comic-book dialogue.
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