“Gotham” TV Series

Gotham’s past is about to hit your TV screen.

In a bidding war Fox has won and announced this week that they will helm the way to making a TV series titled “Gotham”, which will delve into the Gotham history of the pre-Batman days. We won’t see Batman or Bruce Wayne but we will however be following a younger Jim Gordon in his detective days as he battles Gotham’s crime and possibly some very well known bat villains.

Writer and Producer Bruno Heller of the shows the Mentalist and Rome fame will take up the task of bringing Gotham City to life for the viewers. No word yet has been announced on who will play Gotham’s Jim Gordon, but with a resume like the Mentalist and Rome, Gotham has promises of being the next addicting superhero-like TV show to follow Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The main question that may be on everyone’s mind though is how are we as viewers going to maintain interest in Gotham with no Batman? Are they going to be able to explain the likes of Joker, Riddler, Two Face and more in a city without Batman? Where will Batman be? If they created a show called Metropolis with no Superman and followed the Metropolis police, don’t we essentially have CSI New York?

There seems to be a lot of unanswered uncertainties with a Gotham series that seems to be DC’s answer to Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. that took off with great success. It almost seems that the only way to put a back bone in the series with villain interest is to stick to a general crime population and an early take on Arkham Asylum while focusing on filling a complete and unseen history of Jim Gordon much to the likeness of CW’s Smallville with Clark Kent.

One positive spin on the direction that Gotham could take is that there is an already published work called Batman: Year One. In Year One we get a chance to see Jim Gordon who has recently moved to Gotham from Chicago at around a time just after Batman returns to Gotham. We see Gordon in that series take justice into his own hand and kicks butt throughout, giving us hope that a younger Jim Gordon in the TV series would be a Jim that is little more in his prime and less dependent on Batman since he has not been introduced in this take on the timeline. Batman: Year One for those of you that have not read it and may be interested can be picked up at any local comic shop or convention with a little searching. For those of you that don’t want to take the time to read through, there is also a DC Animated Original Movie about Batman: Year One that was produced in 2011 by legendary DC animator Bruce Timm.

Since we are yet in the very early announcement stages of Gotham, be sure to keep an eye out as more announcements on the direction of the show and casting will be announced. There is currently no release date as of yet for the series.

This post was written courtesy of Jason McGray for publication on the GCE.