Author: Neil Vagg

This week our new favourite show ‘Gotham’ returned to screens in the US with it’s first new episode since November ‘Rogues’ Gallery’. When last we left our hero James Gordon he had been dismissed from the GCPD after the death of Dick Lovecraft – see our review of ‘Harvey Dent’ & ‘Love Craft’ for more – and shipped off to the newly opened Arkham Asylum to live out his days on guard duty. Picking up after the break we find Gordon watching the inmates of Arkham putting on a show which unsurprisingly ends in attempted murder. During this sequence we…

This week ‘Gotham’ bows out with its mid-season finale ‘Lovecraft’ a direct follow-on from last weeks ‘Harvey Dent’ (reviewed here). Where ‘Harvey Dent’ focussed on a little less of the action and more of the characters by manipulating them to where they need to be for this episode, ‘Lovecraft’ by comparison ramps up the action. Sadly it fails to leave us with an edge-of-your-seat cliffhanger but it does make some changes which will provide an interesting backdrop for the second half of the season. The episode opens with an assault on Wayne manor lead by familiar character Copperhead – you…

With previous episode ‘The Mask’ (reviewed here) ‘Gotham’ dipped in to some of the deeper Batman lore by introducing Tommy Elliot and Richard Sionis as supporting characters in it’s story of the week. This week ‘Gotham’ goes one step further by introducing a hugely popular character from the comics and even naming the episode after him. ‘Harvey Dent’ marks the first appearance of Nicholas D’Agosto as the titular Harvey who, at this stage, is already an Assistant District Attorney. For his first appearance the eager ADA works alongside Gordon under the belief that Gotham tycoon Dick Lovecraft is behind the…

Coming off the back of a slow burning episode with ‘Penguin’s Umbrella’ (reviewed here) fans of ‘Gotham’ need a little injection of action to bring back the excitement and thankfully we got that with ‘The Mask’. Straying off the fully serialised episode we get more of a monster-of-the-week setup although that overarching mob story is still bubbling away nicely in the background. Firstly: the setup. The episode opens with a slightly mysterious sequence in a dimly lit office where we get to see two guys menace each other to death before one of the bodies turns up just in time…

The intensity of Fox’s ‘Gotham’ is beginning to step up rapidly week-by-week as the serialised nature of the show really begins to pull all the various threads together. Where Fox is actively pushing shows like ‘Sleepy Hollow’ to move away from the serialised structure to allow audiences to dip in and out ‘Gotham’ is continuing to forge ahead with the mob war storyline that pulls all of the major players in to the action. For a show originally billed as an origin of the city which would feature the future Commissioner Gordon in the lead role the show has spent…

With ‘Gotham’ beginning to settle in to a real rhythm and proving to be a hit amongst fans and critics – although perhaps not the hit that Fox were hoping for – it’s time for the series to being to ramp up some of the weirder aspects but more importantly also time to start to flesh out the characters to allow the melodrama to become less daytime soapy and more in line with the tone of a show set in a comic book world. ‘Spirit of the Goat’ gives us a glimpse into the past of Harvey Bullock. A brief…

Bringing us up-to-date on our ‘Gotham’ reviews is 20th Octobers fifth episode ‘Viper’. Checkout our review of previous episodes here. Trailers for the episode made it look like your average, run-of-the-mill drug on the street drug gone wrong episode which would see Bullock and Gordon chasing after some seedy scientist in a lab somewhere cooking up some new trendy drug a la ‘Arrow’ and it’s interpretation of Count Vertigo. The episode we got? A precursor to the story of Bane and a great chance to show some super powered forces on the streets of Gotham. ‘Viper’ slows down the pace…

After three weeks of setup and a couple of throw-away references it was time for a major setting from the world of Batman to make an appearance on ‘Gotham’ and this week it comes in the form of episode four ‘Arkham’. I actually expected this episode to delve full on in to the world of the asylum itself which was probably asking for a bit much in only the fourth episode of the series, instead what we get is a great amount of development towards the gang war on which Gotham sits on the cusp of whilst delving further in…

Going in to its third week ‘The Flash’ is flying high after securing an order for the back 9 episodes taking the season to the full 22, it’s now only a matter of time before the second season renewal is made but before we get ahead of ourselves and start thinking about the future we’re got to deal with the present day and the threat of Kyle Nimbus, otherwise known as the villain Mist from the comics. The writers are not letting up on the comic book villains, throwing them at us on a weekly basis so far rather than dream…

Having steered itself in to dark territory with its second episode (reviewed here) with its third episode ‘Gotham’ has veered off in to the extremely weird for ‘The Balloonman’ although its less of a light relief episode and more of a great example of the kind of story that being a comic book property can allow for. ‘Selina Kyle’ was a great episode that allowed for some violence amongst all of the procedure and protocol whilst allowing some development in the Gordon-Wayne relationship which continues to lay the foundations for their future crime fighting partnership so in stark contract ‘The…