Batman returns to the small screen – with a juvenile Caped Crusader

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/sep/19/batman-gotham-tv-bruce-wayne-juvenile

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Batman is about to make his eagerly awaited return to the small screen after 50 years, the latest salvo in the fierce decades-long rivalry between the comic book giants Marvel and DC.

The new series, Gotham, is a world away from Adam West's camp 1960s outings, a dark ultraviolent prequel in which Bruce Wayne is 12 years old and barely out of short trousers, let alone getting measured up for a cowl and cape.

The DC Comics spin-off is an "origins" story centred not around Batman but young detective (later commissioner) James Gordon, and explains how the villains – the Penguin, the Riddler and the Joker among them, as well as Catwoman – became quite so villainous.

Gotham, made by the US studio (and DC owner) Warner Bros, is another sign of the entertainment industry's insatiable appetite for comic books and the latest example of a film franchise transferring to television.

It also ramps up the rivalry between DC, which has multiple adaptations in the pipeline including big screen team-up Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Disney-owned Marvel, which boasts Iron Man, Spider-Man and the X-Men among its stable of characters.

Like Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., a spin-off of its 2012 film Avengers Assemble, Gotham will have to convince fans that it is not a lazy rip-off and does justice to the comic-strip crimefighter.

Its creator, Bruno Heller, whose previous credits include the US cable channel HBO's epic Rome and CBS television series The Mentalist, has said the programme "won't go for the full theatrical, Spandex costume aspect of the villains".

Echoing the Superman spin-off Smallville, in which Clarke Kent did not don the tights and cape until the last episode of the 11th and final series, Heller said Gotham would "allow us to tell the saga from a much earlier point without ever having to get into a cape and cowl – and without having to worry about superpowers".

Katie Keenan, head of acquisitions at Channel 5, which fought off fierce competition to buy the rights to the show in the UK, said the story was not "just trying to put the big screen on to the small screen". She said: "It feels like a new take on this world with stories that have never been told. The hero and the heart of the piece is Detective Gordon."

Starring Ben McKenzie in the James Gordon role played by Gary Oldman in Christopher Nolan's acclaimed film adaptations, and with British actor Sean Pertwee substituting for Michael Caine as the Waynes' loyal servant Alfred, the 16-part series will premiere in the US on Fox on 22 September and in the UK next month.

A more traditional police procedural type of show, complete with feuding buddy cops, it avoids direct comparisons with Nolan's Dark Knight films and is presumably easier to make on a TV budget. All the familiar villains appear alongside a new creation, Fish Mooney, played by Jada Pinkett Smith.

Gotham was named most promising new show of the autumn season by the Television Critics Association in the US. But switching the focus from Bruce Wayne to future commissioner Gordon is inherently risky, in effect a Batman show without Batman.

Jordan Farley, community editor at sci-fi magazine SFX, said: "There have been comic series based purely on the Gotham police department which have been very successful. The challenge for the show is that people will go in expecting Batman.

"There's nothing wrong with doing something different – people have been doing different things with Batman for 50 or 60 years – but this idea that all these different villains are loitering around Gotham during Bruce's childhood might seem a little contrived."

Gotham is one of a number of new TV comic book adaptations including Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Captain America spin-off Agent Carter with another British actor, Hayley Atwell, in the lead role. DC has developed a series around the Flash, who has super-speed, itself a spin-off of another superhero show, Arrow. Another DC series, Constantine, based on the hit comic Hellblazer about a character facing supernatural threats, has also been picked up by NBC in the US.

The online TV service Netflix, which won critical acclaim for its Kevin Spacey drama House of Cards, signed a five-series deal with Marvel last year, beginning with Daredevil – the "man without fear" – followed by Luke Cage, Iron Fist and Jessica Jones, and ending with a "dream-team miniseries", The Defenders, in which all the characters are brought together, Avengers-style.

The 2003 film adaptation of Daredevil may have flopped – its star Ben Affleck described it as the only movie he regrets – but it does not mean the end of the character.

"There is an in-built audience of people who know these characters and want to find out more about them," said Channel 5's Keenan. "To see them on the big screen, then to have them in your sitting room week in, week out, is fantastic."

Even DC's Supergirl – "from the pages of Superman!" and box office kryptonite 30 years ago with Helen Slater in the lead role – is being developed for a TV series in the US.

Boyd Hilton, TV editor at Heat magazine, said: "The particular challenge for Batman is that there have been so many different versions of it, culminating with the Dark Knight films that were so epic and stylish and brilliantly successful. Superman was always the same thing over the years. But which way do you go with Batman?"

Heller, who is also Gotham's executive producer, has said the problem with writing superhero films is that "human beings are diminished … as soon as the superhero walks out of frame, you're waiting for them to come back." In the prevailing industry climate, it is unlikely to be a long wait.