Pennyworth: The Origin of Batman’s Butler

Our Review

Before he was Batman’s butler, Alfred Pennyworth was an SAS veteran starting a security firm in a swinging-sixties London that is one bad week away from civil war. Jack Bannon plays him as a young Michael Caine, and the show earns the comparison: cold competence with a warm smirk.

It is a stylish period thriller first and a Batman prequel second: a fascist movement is strangling Britain, and Alfred’s path crosses a young Thomas Wayne and Martha Kane. The Palisades era (season three) goes full alt-history weird. Three seasons of espionage, class warfare, and the best-dressed violence on television. The rare prequel that works completely on its own terms.