The Batman: The First Season (2 Disc Edition) [DVD]

This new animated series has been criticised, mainly in the States, for not being as deep as the older 1990's animated series. Though it probably won't be as remembered with quite as much affection as the older series, it is different enough and good enough to enjoyable in its own right.

The focus of the show is different, with the stories having a more superhero feel than the 50's crime show of the 90's show or the Blade Runner feel of Batman Beyond. They've made The Batman character a young man, three years into his career. All the characteristics that make Batman great are here but shown in a more obvious way. You'll see his determination in Traction, his angst and guilt in the Big Chill.

In this show Batman uses more technology and hardware to catch his prey. Is this a cynical ploy by the producers to make kids buy toys or a sound creative decision, showing how the Batman can defeat his redesigned and more powerful rogue's gallery of foes? I think it's the latter. Bane on venom now grows to ten times his original size, whereas Mr. Freeze is a genetic mutation needing only a wave of his hand to cause a storm of ice. With Mr. Freeze they have also reverted back to his 1960's TV origin story of a man who was frozen by Batman and wants revenge. (Mr. Freeze is voiced by Clancy Brown the first animated series' Two-Face and you'll also hear 60's Batman Adam West in the cast.)

The last two episodes are a great finale even to the point of borrowing ideas from Alan Moore's The Killing Joke. The Batman is something new, fresh, zestful, colourful and enjoyable. And while I enjoyed some episodes more than others I'd still recommend its purchase.

Batman: The Animated Series is widely regarded as one of the greatest animated shows ever, if not shows full stop, and is generally perceived as the pinnacle of animated superhero shows. As such, when Justice League Unlimited was winding to a close, and The Batman was starting, you can't help but wonder what their mentality was. How could they possibly follow more than a decade of the most high-quality, intelligent, adult-oriented (but with minimal adult content) animation?

The Batman is mostly a work of guts, and for that it is admirable. It took guts to even conceive this show, it took guts to have different voices (for this season at least), it took guts to start from scratch. And most of all, it took guts to do such an extensive redesign of mostly everything that Batman - either in comics or on the screen - is about.

This show takes a lot of chances. Characters are totally redesigned. Sometimes it's brilliant - Bane's size and skin colour changes when he hits his venom, Cluemaster as a bloated lunatic stuck in the past, Scarface's giant puppet - and some of them are truly radical; the two-part Clayface story that ends this season is the first pinnacle of the show, and shows the maturity it displays over ensuing seasons.

Some of these redesigns are less successful - the new Joker is, unfortunately, pretty bad. His ape-like mannerisms are weak, and the guy voicing him - a respected voice actor in his own right - unfortunately sounds like he's doing a bad impression of Mark Hamill.

Also, as can so often happen with the first seasons of shows, in spite of some quality voice acting (Batman is played by them man who played Rico in the much-mourned CGI series Starship Troopers: Chronicles, John DiMaggio and Tom Kenney make appearances), the season does, until the end, end up being somewhat of a 'villain of the week' show.

All in all, while not nearly at the level of Batman: TAS (after all, what COULD be?) The Batman showed promise from season one onwards and only got better from here. A show to look out for.

Batman is a very versatile character and like all great characters can be reinterpreted from time to time.

There have been a few Batman TV shows down the years, live action and animated. And here's the first season of a mid decade take on the character in cartoon form. Fans of Batman regarded the 1990's cartoon as utterly definitive and perfect and thus this show had a tough act to follow.

In doing a new take on things it adopted a style that looks like something out of a manga comic. This and the red skies over Gotham is something you get used to quicker than you might expect. The Batman here takes full advantage of more recent developments in technology utilising devices that animated predecessors never had before, and Bruce Wayne is very much a moden playboy, wearing shirts without a tie.

The thirteen episodes of the season are presented here spread over two discs. Each runs roughly eighteen to twenty two minutes long. Supposedly set in the third year since Batman first appeared in the city he has no allies on the police at this point in time and is a wanted vigilante. There's no sign of Commissioner Gordon just a rather inefficient police chief. Feisty female detective Ellen Yin wants to catch him and her partner Ethan Bennett is an old friend of Bruce's who has no idea of his double life.

Most episodes serve to introduce the villains, all having fresh takes on them different to the 1990's version. The production team do well by coming up with a whole new take on Mr Freeze, given how much great work was done with the character in the previous version. But there's something about their version of the Joker that doesn't quite work. Catwoman is voiced by Gina Gershon, which is perfect casting. Although the ears of her costume are so large you can't help but think of her more as Ratwoman.

Some episodes are stronger than others but it does get better as the season progresses, later episodes getting a bit dark as they tell the rather gruesome origin of clayface.

It's not as good a show as the 1990's version but it's not a bad effort. And it can only get stronger as it goes now the first season has done the ground work.

The dvd has the following language and subtitles:

Languages: English Danish Norwegian Swedish.

Subtitles: English Danish Finnish Norwegian Swedish.

On disc two there are a couple of short documentaries running six to seven minutes each.

The first looks at the creation of the show and does get in a good detail of interesting information about the creative decisions made.

The second looks at the making of the action figures to go with the show. A framing device involving one of the characters from the show investigating the toy company does rather distract from it, though.

There are two short quizzes that use clips from the episodes.

A short section of clips giving background information about the villains.

A game involving taking down Mr. Freeze that you play by using the dvd remote.

And trailers for some other dc comics cartoon collections. None of which are on region two dvd yet.

A pretty decent dvd package for a decent show.

Epileptics and those who can't look at flashing lights be warned that the episode 'the man who would be bat' and some of the title sequences for the extras feature flashing images.