Note: While Gotham doesn’t debut until September 22nd, FOX have now offered the pilot to press for review purposes, following a screening at Comic-Con last month.

Right up front, I think I should mention that I’m not someone who previously objected to the idea of a Batman-less Batman series. I’ve ditched (perhaps not fully) the whole “What’s the point?” stance regarding hot property adaptations, especially with NBC’s exquisite Hannibal having recently proved all pre-judgements I had about that project very, very wrong.

Where I think FOX’s Gotham – which is set to chronicle the rise-through-the-ranks of young police detective James “Jim” Gordon (Ben McKenzie) – might run into some trouble is in the fact that we’ve seen so many different iterations of this particular world that we’ve all mostly settled on “our favorite” depiction, and might become needlessly irked if things aren’t portrayed in a particular manner. Though, to be fair, Batman fans have also shown, by the billions of dollars spent at the box office, that they’re willing to accept drastic deviations from the source material if it’s done well.

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