‘PENNYWORTH’ SERIES 3.

Thank God Pennyworth is back (alright, it’s been on Amazon Prime since October 2022, but I’ve only just caught up with the third series). To be specific, Pennyworth – The Origin of Batman’s Butler, as the subtitle now clarifies. Why the production team needed to add that, I don’t know; maybe the series was such a success in its own right – cockney ex-army rogue and club owner Alfred ‘Alfie’ Pennyworth, caught between the underworld, security services and fascist Ravens, in a might-have-been 1960s London where The Clash can be heard next to the Small Faces – that the producers needed to remind people that, “Hey, guys! This is actually part of the Batman franchise. Remember that?”

It doesn’t make any odds. Pennyworth Series Three is the same heady mix of 1960s pop culture, ultraviolence, alternative post-war British history, sharp-as-Alfie’s-suits dialogue and bloody great music as it’s always been.

What’s impressive and so enjoyable about Pennyworth is the fine balance between tongue in cheek geezerdom and committed, truthful performances that touch on universal themes like the importance of family, loyalty, moral values and honour. I can’t think of any other series that glides so effortlessly between subversive, freewheeling pastiche and compelling human drama.

And, oh – the in jokes! Martha Wayne (Emma Paetz) works for MI5, has a “licence to kill” and is “needed”, as John Steed used to say to Mrs Peel in The Avengers (1962-69). Sublime. Then Thomas Wayne (Ben Aldridge, magnificent) is called “number two” and at least sixty fans of The Prisoner (1967-68) punch the air. Topping that, Alfie’s old squeeze, Sandra Oslow (Harriet Slater), rocks a leather catsuit like Marianne Faithfull in Girl on a Motorcycle (1968).

And if that wasn’t enough, one of the key plot points riffs on the Adam Adamant Lives! episode ‘Sing a Song of Murder’ (1966) via the classic conspiracy thriller The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Honestly, you really couldn’t make this up. It’s like the writers are mainlining my personal cult TV wish list.

Happily, the cheerfully homicidal Bet Sykes (Paloma Faith, above, in a part she was born to play) is back on top form, after being rather sidelined last time round. This time she’s hunting down Ravens on the run and before the end of the first episode, she’s offed two and adopted their baby. A promising start.

The subtitle for year three is ‘Peace, Love and mind control’. Delightfully, a hippy cult led by potty-mouthed Susie (Jaye Griffiths) – “Oh do fuck off” – appear to be the villains, placing the action roughly in the late ‘60s. Added complications arise in the person of Thomas’s father, Patrick (Richard Dillane), manipulating his son on behalf of the CIA. Then there’s the return of Alfie’s nemesis ‘Captain Blighty’ (James Purefoy), a melancholy ‘enhanced human’.

Add some of the best tunes you’ve ever heard – ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’ by The Clash and ‘All the Way to Memphis’ by Mott the Hoople, to name only two – and you’ve got, perhaps, the defining cult hit of the 2020s that’ll be pored over and cherished for years to come.

Pennyworth is that good.