There's a lot of superhero media out there at the moment, and it seems like no part of a famous character's mythos can be free from on-screen adaptation. Some pitches are better than others, however, and a show about the early career of the man who serves Batman tea and sage wisdom was evidently not the instant hit folks were expecting.
Disney Plus has its Marvel shows, with a new one hitting the service every couple of months. HBO Max is the primary venue for DC's small-screen efforts, but they're a bit messier than their competition. In this oversaturated market, creators and studios are willing to try anything to stand out.
Pennyworth was initially released in the summer of 2019 on a fairly unpopular streaming service called Epix. The service spun off from a premium cable network of the same name, was recently acquired by Amazon, and will be rebranding as MGM+ next year due to its nonexistent public profile. The show was co-produced by Bruno Heller, who had a hand in Fox's Gotham. As the title suggests, it depicts the life of Alfred Pennyworth, Batman's loyal butler. Comic book fans know that Alfred had a long career as a spy among many other things before joining the Wayne family, and this show is the first on-screen adaptation of that story. By all accounts, the show is pretty good. It's an English period spy thriller with a snarky sense of humor and some solid action setpieces. Unfortunately, it was on a network no one had heard of, and it received no promotion whatsoever. So, when the show moved to HBO Max for its third season, Warner Bros., in their infinite wisdom, appended the subtitle The Origin of Batman's Butler.
The problem with Pennyworth is not its distance from the Batman mythos. People weren't sizing up their binge-watch options and choosing something else, they didn't even know that Pennyworth was an option. No one was talking about this show, including the completely unknown network it was available on. Someone looked at a show that got no promotion and decent reviews and decided that the problem was that the title wasn't clear enough. They must've pictured people seeing the name Pennyworth and being completely unaware of whom that surname belonged to. Is there any imaginable overlap between people who would be interested in a show about Batman's butler and people who do not know his name? Of course not, but the hilarious decision to add that subtitle does make some interesting points about the way superhero media is marketed nowadays.
It seems like there's no hero too small to have a hit show or movie. James Gunn has perfected the noble art of imbuing comic book nobodies with enough personality and plot relevance to make them beloved. There's something hugely admirable about the way he can convince everyone else to love a D-list talent as much as he does. There's something much less impressive about taking a minor supporting character from a more popular franchise and trying to make them an independent hit. It's so cynical to start with a franchise packed with characters that people love, then try to divorce them from context and turn each figure into their own profitable brand. Pennyworth, arguably, wasn't an example of that lame marketing strategy. It was a new version of the character that didn't tie into any major franchise. It's much closer in kind to one of the Hulu Marvel shows, self-contained seasons of TV that happen to be based on comic books. By attaching that subtitle, the studio shows its hand.
Most people know who Batman is. He's been at the center of several of the most popular and best-received action films of the past forty years. Even people who've never read a comic or watched a comic book movie have probably heard the name Bruce Wayne said aloud. A person watching Pennyworth would likely gather that the show was somehow related to Batman with the baseline level of information that almost every person has. The connection isn't terribly important to the plot, but it's gradually grown in scale as the seasons go on. If given the proper promotion, this show could've succeeded on its own merits, but its new home doesn't seem to feel that way.
Pennyworth: The Origins of Batman's Butler is a monument to the fear and risk aversion of big studios. They're so convinced that nothing can succeed on its merits, that no one knows what they want unless it's marked with something they already love, that nothing is free from over-branding. As funny as it is that HBO Max assumed the problem was a lack of comic book knowledge and clarity, it's also sad to see a solid show reach out in desperation. Pennyworth deserves better, as does the viewing public.