GOTHAM and AGENTS OF SHIELD reprieved for another year

With cancellation-ageddon scything down shows by the dozen (although Brooklyn Nine-Nine has been saved and The Expanse looks likely for a last-minute move to Amazon), the fates of superhero dramas Gotham on Fox and Agents of SHIELD on ABC had looked dubious. Fortunately, both shows have been saved.

Gotham has been given a fifth season order, which will also be the show's last. The showrunners have confirmed that the series will finally see Bruce Wayne become Batman, with the show loosely adapting the Zero Year comic storyline (having dabbled with both the Killing Joke and No Man's Land storylines in Season 4). An episode count for the final season has yet to be decided, but given the nature of the show's reprieve it may only be 13 episodes.

Agents of SHIELD has also been given a 13-episode order, although this is plot-related: the opening of Season 6 will apparently reflect on events in Infinity War II, which is not due to hit cinemas until May 2019. The half-season order means that Agents of SHIELD will not return until shortly before the movie arrives in cinemas, allowing them to play out the aftermath of the cliffhanger before the sequel comes out and then continue afterwards. This will also be accompanied by the first movement of the Agents of SHIELD cast back to the films: Clark Gregg, who plays Agent Coulson on the show, will reprise the role in the Captain Marvel movie due for release in February 2019.

The long-term fate of Agents of SHIELD and the Netflix Marvel shows are in question: ABC is unhappy with the relatively low ratings of Agents of SHIELD and allegedly both the fifth and sixth season renewals came at the behest of their owners, Disney, to help their Marvel brand. ABC have objected because they could have a new and hopefully better-performing show in the timeslot instead. Disney are also launching a new adult-oriented streaming service at the end of 2019 which will include a Marvel track (including a brand-new live-action show, the details of which have not yet been revealed, and a Star Wars TV show helmed by Jon Favreau), and rumours are circulating that Agents of SHIELD may be moved over to that service. It's also possible that Disney will pull their six Netflix shows (Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Defenders and The Punisher) to transfer to the new service, as they likely don't want to be making shows for the competition.

BROOKLYN NINE-NINE saved by NBC, more shows cancelled

NBC have swooped in to save Brooklyn Nine-Nine after it was cancelled by Fox yesterday.

NBC cited the enormous outpouring of affection for the show as a reason for rescuing the show, along with their excellent relationship with the show's creators, Michael Schur and Dan Goor, whom they previously worked on with Parks and Recreation. NBC is also currently producing Schur's newer series The Good Place.

The sixth season order is for 13 episodes, which will allow NBC to assess how well the series is going before ordering further episodes.

Meanwhile, cancellations are coming thick and fast. Last Man on Earth has also been cancelled after four seasons and Wayward Pines after two. The X-Files has also been cancelled, or more accurately to say, Fox have no plans to continue the show's soft renewal after Gillian Anderson indicated she was done with the series. Producer Chris Carter is still planning more X-Files movies, however. The Exorcist has also been cancelled after two seasons and Lucifer after three. The outpouring of anger over the cancellation of the latter has matched Brooklyn Nine-Nine's, with fans hoping for a similar reprieve on another network.

Meanwhile, Batman prequel show/hallucinogenic fever dream Gotham is in the bizarre predicament of having its future decided by what happens to another show, the Lethal Weapon reboot. Fox was forced to fire Lethal Weapon's star after on-set drama and is now scrambling to recast with just days left before a final deadline. If it is unable to do so, it will can Lethal Weapon and renew Gotham, otherwise Gotham will be axed, despite some recent ratings boosts as the show has focused on the Joker as a villain and the teenage Bruce Wayne taking more definitive steps towards donning the cowl.

Also in an unusual state is Agents of SHIELD. ABC tried to kill the show last year, but owners Disney stepped in and overruled them, citing the show's importance to their overall Marvel Cinematic Universe. This still seems to be the case this year, with Disney and Marvel leaning on the season finale to tie in with Avengers: Infinity War and help build intrigue for next year's sequel, as well as Captain Marvel (which will see Agents of SHIELD actor Clark Gregg rejoin the movie cast for the first time since the original Avengers movie). On that basis, it seems unlikely that Disney will kill the show, especially as it could make a great fit for their new streaming service launching in late 2019 (allowing them to take it - and possibly their entire Netflix roster - out of another company's hands). With ABC unhappy about the ratings, however, it might be that we get a compromise, with a half-season order with the show not to return until after Infinity War II hits our screens next spring.

Over at the CW, executives surprised industry observers, their own fans and the creative team by confirming they would not be proceeding with Wayward Sisters, a spin-off from their long-running series Supernatural. After a well-received backdoor pilot earlier this year, the project looked good for a season order and it's a bit of a puzzle why the CW has not proceeded with it.

Meanwhile, the fate of The Expanse remains unclear. Alcon Entertainment own the show outright so can sell it to Amazon, Netflix or another network much more easily, but this is likely to be a more involved process, where we likely won't know the outcome for a few weeks at least.

Over at Netflix directly, the streaming service seems happy with the performance of Lost in Space (despite lukewarm reviews) and on course to renew. The fate of Altered Carbon is much less clear. The cyberpunk epic aired to generally good reviews (after more mixed early previews), but its viewership seemed weak, with the show charting up less than one-third of the streams of Lost in Space in its first week available, despite an apparently higher budget. However, Netflix themselves have to bear some blame for this by sabotaging Altered Carbon's launch with news of their Cloverfield Paradox deal (complete with a major Superbowl ad campaign). With Altered Carbon airing three months ago, it is unusual for Netflix to wait so long before confirming the show's return or cancellation, suggesting it's a tough decision for them.

Gotham: Season 1.5

The war for control of Gotham City between the Falcone and Maroni families is heating up, with events manipulated from behind the scenes by the Penguin. Meanwhile, Jim Gordon finds himself demoted for annoying the upper echelons of the police force too many times.

The first half of Gotham's first season stumbled a few times, but by its conclusion had developed into a watchable game of factional intrigue and warfare for control of Gotham City. The city was given a real sense of identity and character missing from the Nolan films (in which it could be anywhere), the actors were pretty decent and Bruno Heller seemed to, after a delayed start, beging Gotham in a similar direction to his fantastic HBO series, Rome.

Unfortunately, the second half of the season doesn't just undo all that work, it blows it to smithereens and then pretends it never existed in the first place. The second half of Gotham's first season is terrible, a plunge in quality that is quite remarkable. Characters act without explicable motivation, things happen that don't make any sense and a character pulls out her own eyeball to spite an enemy (she gets a bionic robot one later on, so there is no real consequence to this madness). There are plot holes you can drive a tractor through, the Penguin is caught out as a traitor to both sides and spared for literally no reason and the series, as a whole, develops an allergic reaction to sensible, rational plotting.

There are glimmers of hope here and there: Alfred gets a lot more to do and Sean Pertwee impresses as always, Morena Baccarin has a recurring role and the mob storyline (apart from Fish Mooney) is intermittently interesting, mainly thanks to John Doman's statesmanlike, grounded performance. The evolution of the Riddle is also reasonably well-handled, helped by it being fairly low-key.

But these signs of hope can't help the muddled plotting, indifferent dialogue and increasingly bizarre story turns that smack of executive meddling and poor decision-making. If the first half of Gotham's first season opened with a lot of promise, it has squandered almost all of it by the end of the second half (**).

Gotham: Season 1.0

Ex-soldier Jim Gordon arrives in Gotham City to take up his new job as a detective on the police force. Hoping to clean up the streets, he instead finds the police riven by corruption and in bed with the local gangsters. The brutal murder of the city's richest couple, Martha and Thomas Wayne, shines a spotlight onto the city's crime problem, giving Jim and his new partner, the grizzled Detective Harvey Bullock, a moment to shine. It also provides the impetus for the rise to power of a new criminal mastermind, Oswald Cobblepot (aka "Penguin") and spurs the anger of the murdered couple's son, Bruce.

Every incarnation of Batman starts in a similar manner: the young Bruce Wayne witnesses the murder of his parents by criminals. Years later, he takes up the mantle of Batman to deliver justice to the streets. Gotham asks the question of what would happen if you didn't have that jump forwards 10 or 20 years, and instead stay in the moment. Bruce Wayne is an angry, confused young child whose guardian, Alfred, has to console and help him carry on. The cops of Gotham are under pressure to catch the killers. And through it all a new wave of crazy criminals are rising to displace the more traditional old guard of Italian-descended crime families.

It's a rich vein to mine stories from, although it does also throw up a central problem: how to generate drama when we know that characters (good guys and villains alike) important to the later Batman mythos will survive, and the whole thing is just stage-setting for when the Bat shows up (presumably at which point this series will end)? Gotham doesn't really answer that question, but instead just settles for being relentlessly entertaining.

The main showrunner on the series is Bruno Heller, an experienced Hollywood writer who has been responsible for some standard procedural fare (like The Mentalist) but whose most outstanding moment remains the HBO series Rome, which depicted the ancient empire with a real sense of place and cultural identity, home to well-drawn, complex characters. Impressively, he brings these skills to Gotham. The city is neither the anonymous everycity of the recent Chris Nolan films, nor the baroque playground of Tim Burton. Instead it falls in between, with Gothic stylings and some very clever CG manipulation of real city backdrops to create something distinctive. This applies to the people and the factions feuding for control of the city as well. Delving into the comics for ideas and backstories, Heller isn't afraid to bring his own ideas to the table as well. Most impressive is the show's tone, which after a ropey opening few episodes in which it searches for its own identity, it settles down into pulp, walking a fine line between camp, action and melodrama which is quite enjoyable.

If the show has a weak spot, it's Ben McKenzie's fairly straightforward portrayal of Jim Gordon as an everyday hero of the people. Attempts to darken his character don't really work, but towards the end of this opening run of ten episodes he develops a grim sense of humour and the ex-military role is played up a little bit more to give him something to do. As characters go, he's okay and you can see him developing into the later friend of Batman, but the character needs a bit more fleshing out going forwards. Far better is Harvey Bullock, played with roguish charisma by Donal Logue, a once-good cop corrupted by the city and who clings onto Jim's idealism as a way of redeeming himself. Better still is Robin Lord Taylor, who brings the right air of intelligence and charm to the role of the Penguin. Taylor is great, the show's big find, but the producers need to be careful they don't overuse him and burn out the character before he's had a chance to achieve his destiny. Child actors David Mazouz and Camren Bicondova are also very good finds for the roles of Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle. The idea that Batman and Catwoman are actually childhood friends may induce much rolling of the eyeballs, but the writing and the actors sell it so it convinces, rather than becoming twee.

More established hands can be found with Jada Pinkett Smith playing new villain Fish Mooney with scene-chewing relish. Irritating in early episodes, she gets more interesting material to play with later on and rises to the challenge. The Wire's John Doman plays Don Falcone with charm and gravitas, but also a sense of palpable menace that makes him a genuinely threatening figure. The casting director also deserves massive props for hitting on the idea of casting the always-excellent Sean Pertwee as Alfred. He doesn't have much to do in early episodes, but later ones depict him as an ex-military bruiser with impressive resourcefulness.

The show stumbles in its opening episodes as it searches for its tone and identity, but finds itself pretty quickly. The developing ongoing storylines about Penguin and Arkham Asylum are well-handled and the show moves at a pretty strong clip, rarely flagging. There are other weaknesses: the relationship between Barbara (Erin Richards) and Renee Montoya (Victoria Cartagena) is extremely unconvincing, and a late-episode story twist is clearly an awkward retcon. There's also the feeling of some Batman villains being shoehorned into the show long before they're really needed. Riddler is being well-handled, but Poison Ivy as a kid is completely pointless right now.

But these put aside, Gotham (****) is a very entertaining slice of pulp. It's certainly a lot more impressive and fun at this stage in its development than the other big superhero TV show, Agents of SHIELD, was at the same point. Whether the show can sustain or improve itself going forwards remains to be seen, but at this point it is certainly highly watchable.