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Pennyworth: The Origin of Batman's Butler Trailer Shorter Than Title

Pennyworth: The Origin of Batman's Butler, the bonkers prequel series to the Batman saga featuring the earlier years of Alfred Pennyworth, will have its third season premiering on HBO Max on October 6th.  HBO Max seems to feel the need to fully describe the show in the title out of fear that viewers might be too stupid or know or just be interested in a perfectly good British thriller series. A new trailer for season 3 has been released ahead of the premiere.

Pennyworth: The Origin of Batman's Butler Trailer Shorter Than Title
Image: HBO Max

Pennyworth: The Origin of Batman's Butler follows Alfred Pennyworth (Jack Bannon), a former British SAS soldier, who forms a security company in 1960s London and goes to work with young billionaire Thomas Wayne (Ben Aldridge) and his wife Martha (Emma Paetz) before they become Bruce Wayne's parents. Season three of the psychological thriller begins after a five-year time jump: the civil war is over, and a cultural revolution has changed the world for better or worse – ushering in a new age of Super Heroes and Supervillains. All in all, season 3 looks like a fresh start for the show. Alfie Pennyworth is a troubleshooter for hire and nowhere near a butler-training school just yet. Did you know you have to train to be qualified? It's a specialized job that's more than just being a housekeeper – it involves running an entire household for the family and effectively being a CEO of a mansion. Many modern butlers are also ex-military and also serve as bodyguards to the families they work for. That's what Alfred Pennyworth: The Origin of Batman's Butler is about.

The series is based on DC characters created by Bob Kane with Bill Finger, the ten-episode series from Warner Bros. Television is executive produced by Bruno Heller, Matthew Patnick, Danny Cannon and John Stephens. The series is produced in the UK at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden.

Aside from Jack Bannon as Alfred "Alfie" Pennyworth and Ben Aldridge and Emma Paetz as the Waynes, the cast includes singer-actor Paloma Faith as a scene-stealing recurring sociopathic villainess seemingly patterned after Myra Hindley, the real-life companion of 1960s Britain's most notorious serial killer Ian Brady, as well as Ryan Fletcher, Dorothy Atkinson, Ramon Tikaram, Harriet Slater and Simon Manyonda.

The first two seasons of Pennyworth were a wild alternate history of 1960s London – World War II never happened, and fascism is still a threat in England – and very British, with lots of in-jokes only people versed in working-class Cockney culture would spot. This was down to showrunner Heller, who previously created the minor HBO hit Rome and then Gotham on Fox. Alfie Pennyworth, as played by Bannon, was a working-class East End action hero, a rarity in genre fiction even today, and the increasingly crazy situations he got into on the show while the young Thomas Wayne and Martha fought against a rising civil war against nationalists in England and even Aleister Crowley showed up on the show. The third season time-jump suggests the show is getting a fresh start story-wise so that newcomers can jump on without watching the first two, but we recommend you watch the first season just to see how hilariously, brilliantly insane it is as British genre thrillers go.

Pennyworth is on HBO Max.


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Adi TantimedhAbout Adi Tantimedh

Adi Tantimedh is a filmmaker, screenwriter and novelist. He wrote radio plays for the BBC Radio, “JLA: Age of Wonder” for DC Comics, “Blackshirt” for Moonstone Books, and “La Muse” for Big Head Press. Most recently, he wrote “Her Nightly Embrace”, “Her Beautiful Monster” and “Her Fugitive Heart”, a trilogy of novels featuring a British-Indian private eye published by Atria Books, a division Simon & Schuster.
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