Pennyworth [S03 Complete]

Like Benjamin Button, Batman’s butler keeps getting younger. Traditionally a more elderly gent, Alfred Pennyworth reverted to early middle age in the Batman prequel series “Gotham.” Now he has his own series, “Pennyworth,” beginning Sunday on Epix, and in it he’s a robust 26-year-old who goes by Alfie and is determined not to follow in the footsteps of his butler father.Pennyworth Season 1-3 Download.

He also keeps getting tougher, a process that began with Michael Caine’s portrayal in the “Dark Knight” films. Now he’s a full-fledged, if reluctant, action hero, a combat-stressed veteran of the British special forces with flashbacks to extreme violence in some indeterminate jungle.A peaceable man aspiring to a conventionally prosperous middle-class existence, whose talent for mayhem emerges when he sees injustice — this is an Alfred whose conflicted soul calls to mind that of his future employer. It also fits the template of Bruno Heller and Danny Cannon, the writer-producers behind both “Gotham” and “Pennyworth,” who once again put comic-book material at the service of dark, stylized melodrama.

Heller, who wrote the five (of 10) episodes available for review, and Cannon obviously love the process of world-building, and the most interesting thing about “Pennyworth” in the early going is their grimly atmospheric vision of an alternate 1960s London. It’s visually situated between a hazy Constable landscape, a rubble-strewn neorealist film and a steampunk dystopia. (The inventive production design is by Mark Scruton.) Barrage balloons still float overhead, executions are televised and a Nazi-like outfit called the Raven Society — having outlasted the real-life British Union of Fascists by three decades — conducts a shadowy campaign to overthrow the government.Alfred (Jack Bannon), newly returned to civilian life, hopes to use his military training to launch a security business with his fellow commandos Dave Boy (Ryan Fletcher) and Bazza (Hainsley Lloyd Bennett), but in the meantime he’s working as a bouncer at a posh nightclub.