Batman: Caped Crusader offers an exciting and intoxicating iteration of the classic DC Comics character with a noir inspired adaptation featuring beautiful animation, darker storytelling and great villains that makes for one series that fans cannot afford to miss.

Over the decades, we have had numerous adaptations of Batman on both the big screen and in television, with each iteration of the character bringing a new perspective to the classic Gotham Knight. We have had fantastical and goofy adaptations such as the Adam West series and Batman & Robin (bat nipples anyone), more comic accurate interpretations including Batman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond, and dark, gritty and realistic approaches such as Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy and The Batman. Hailing from producers J.J. Abrams, Matt Reeves and Bruce Timm, this series takes a heavy noir styling to Gotham’s most infamous detective and follows a younger Batman in his early days of crime solving that feels like the spiritual follow-up to Batman: The Animated Series. But instead of retreading the same ground as that iconic television series, Timm’s new series embraces a maturity and inherent darkness that comes with the character, weaving an entertaining series over the course of ten episodes that is a rich, spellbinding television event.

There is an inherent darkness to Batman as a character, and while some iterations of the character have shied away from this aspect, Batman: Caped Crusader embraces this darkness with open arms. From the gorgeous hand drawn animation of this world set in the 1940s, noir stylings in the story and production design, Frederik Wiedmann’s haunting musical score, and the maturity and seriousness of the storylines and themes explored in the series, this is a different Batman than we are normally used to seeing. Over the course of ten episodes, following an episodic narrative structure featuring a different Batman villain each episode in the villain of the week format, audiences see the bond between Batman and Jim and Barbara Gordon develop as Gotham is ravaged by crime. While Batman is largely left unexplored as a character, the development, exploration and evolution of the villains are the highlight of the show. Grounded heavily in reality and less fantastic than they typically appear in the comics, each villain has a gritty and nuanced approach to them that fully develops them as flawed, and sometimes tragic, individuals, creating a true darkness to their individual stories that helps build out Batman’s gallery of rogues over the course of the season. While not all the villains seen are the biggest Batman villains, there is a good mix of prominent villains and second tier ones, with the Penguin and Harley Quinn being reimagined to match not only the tone of this series, but modern society as well. As the episodic storytelling plays out, there is a larger story at play underneath which becomes evident in the season’s final two episodes, helping to create a memorable two part finale. And that final scene, well… it promises a major development and villain for the show’s already announced second season.