One for the Bat-fam?
Officially named 85 years ago (in the comic book pages of January 1941’s Batman #4, triv fans), the Bat-location of Gotham City was named after a village in the English city of Nottingham 15 minutes drive from where my mother grew up. Taking Robin Hood’s ethos to extremes, Gotham is a horrid haven of criminal activity and deep-rooted corruption, a stinking cesspit of violence yet all the while watched over protectively by a mysterious masked vigilante. The young but filthy rich Bruce Wayne had been made an orphan due to his parents’ brutal murder, thus, he undergoes training to become the protector of this dark and dangerous metropolis, the Batman, AKA The Dark Knight.
Coincidentally, the Batman TV series — caped comedy caper to you and me — also debuted on ABC in the US sixty years ago this week. Yet until the end of the eighties many of us 70s kids only knew the character as this ironic campy champion played by Adam West: a part-policeman part-detective alter-ego with Joan Crawford-like painted-on eyebrows and a fantastically square jawed profile from which an earnest authoritativeness emanated. In other words, he sounds to modern ears like a wanton ribald hybrid winking furiously somewhere between Jeff Goldblum and William Shatner at his most Star Trekkin.
There’s a valid argument that Superman is still the definitive comic book hero, but when it comes to the big screen, there isn’t a character more lionised than Batman, who’sfeatured in more films than any other superhero and has become a highly sought-after acting role for a panoply of Hollywood’s most in-demand leading men.
To The Batmobile!
Back in the days before the perennial problems of sequelitis and streaming stuck a stake in the collective hearts of visual media, scores of us termed Gen X types remember fondly how we grew up watching our favourite superheroes on the big and small screens.
To those of us entertained by wow and wonder, these larger-than-life characters evoked a sense of escapism and empowerment as the all-conquering heroes tackle and take down the villains, always symbolising the age-old Hollywood narrative that good triumphs over bad. Well, until they killed off James Bond in No Time To Die, anyway. Harumph.
Symptomatic of how Marvel have, conversely, dominated and all but decimated mainstream movie-making in the 21st Century, rival DC figure Batman occupies an unusual place in the pantheon of caped greats. Not having knowingly read either a Marvel or DC comic (though I’d cast a furtive glance at my younger sister’s Beanos and Dandys, just because…), my starting point was in mid 70s Britain, as infant school pupil in Bletchley watching 70s reruns of the original 1960s series. Though it’s fair to say Batman rarely gets included in the lineage of telly greats; its colourful reputation as a loud and zany (remember that word?), proudly unserious, pop-art riff forever tainting its standing as worthy entertainment.
While some superheroes are aliens and others are humans just with powerful tech and a wardrobe on expense account, they all share the sense of dashing heroism that makes viewers compelled to tap themselves into their ecosystems.
The way I remember it is that my two favourite ‘superheroes’ of the seventies were one homegrown (the alien), and one import (the human).
The way the TV programmes were scheduled the prominent pair generally took over programming for much of the week and year, with the BBC’s Doctor Who exhibiting his awesome alien eccentricity — first via Jon Pertwee and then the Time Lord to end all Time Lords, the incomparable Tom Baker — on Saturday teatimes from autumn through to spring, for anything up to 26 weeks of the year.
Did I have a favourite? The history book on the shelf suggests the Gallifreyan goon always took precedence, though on a 2025 visit back to Buckinghamshire to see my parents, I was reminded that I had implored Ma and Pa to treat me to just one Fourth Doctor annual but at least two Batman toys in the shape of a miniature Batmobile and a silver-plated Bat-ring, a suitably stylish left-hand adornment which I delighted in wearing to school and in the playground would lift up while still ensconced on the middle finger and tell the more gullible kids that I could see episodes of the programme being played in real time.
Amazingly they fell for it too. Cue funny turns.
In strike-blighted 70s Blighty, Batman largely was a summer seasonal series, though not exclusively for us, chiefly because during the first three decades of its existence as the UK’s fastest growing New Town, Father’s employers the Milton Keynes Development Corporation had banned unsightly rooftop aerials throughout its estates and villages (and by extension, its existing town constituencies of Bletchley, Stony Stratford, Wolverton etc) and thus, we were automatically plugged into one of the countries’ first cable networks whether were liked it or not.
By virtue of the fact the geography of MK was deliberately sited to be largely equidistant between Birmingham (north), London (south), Oxford (west) and Cambridge (east) this meant we were triple penetrated with ITV stations from three (count ‘em!) regions: Anglia in the East (dullsville), ATV in the Midlands (decent), and my personal favourite, Thames (weekdays) and LWT (weekends) in the capital. Holy smorgasbord, three is indeed the magic number, though you might not sit down for a week as a consequence.
So if you watched Batman on ITV during the 70s, you were likely catching a cornucopia of syndicated American repeats, providing family-friendly fun for all ages. Or so I thought.
On an extended visit to stay with my paternal grandparents in their Cricklewood bungalow in the scorchio heatwave of 1976, I recall viewing the latest transmission of the Caped Crusader’s fly-by-nights on Thames with the requisite egg and chips TV dinner accompanied by Gran and occasional local buddy Darren, who I think I’d got to know via a nursery at Minster Road.
After the show was over I asked said grandmother if she watched Batman when I wasn’t around, and her response baffled me for an age.
“No, Steven, don’t be silly!”
At least she didn’t call me stoopid, eh Wanda? Though what’s bleedin’ obvious is that I had yet to learn that there were programmes for kids, programmes for adults, and those which the adults watched with the kids to keep them company. Indeed, Mother only told me after this century’s phenomenal reboot of Doctor Who that she liked “Jon Pertwee the best” as the tetchy Time Lord. “But I only watched the programme because you liked it.”
Gran’s strangely vociferous reaction to my innocuous query did indeed puzzle me for years, until a Saturday afternoon showing of Batman: The Movie aired on the tellybox sometime in the late seventies.
A theatrical spin-off produced during the first year of the hugely popular TV series, we kids loved that this was the only way we could witness all of the Dynamic Duo’s most evil nemeses — the wicked clown prince of crime the Joker, plus the Riddler, Catwoman, and my personal favourite, the quacking waddling aristocratic Penguin — joining forces as billionaire Bruce Wayne dons the cape as Batman (Adam West) ably assisted by little Dick Grayson, as the Boy Wonder Robin (Burt Ward) thwart yet another dastardly master-plan to control Gotham City and the world.
The bit that completely ruined it for me? Batman is on a rope ladder over the sea and when a sharp-jawed shark had the impudence to attach itself to one of our hero’s legs my father started laughing and sniggering, a revelatory pronouncement on both the rubber inauthenticity of the cartilaginous cretin and the satirical comedic nature of the drama.
There’s indigent impressionable infant me taking it at face value, and in a matter of seconds I was given the wake up call every child dreads. Batman is being played for laughs, it’s satire, and silly and camp, though it would be a while before I truly understood the dictionary definition of the latter. To me, camp was what we Boy Scouts did at away weekend jaunts to Cosgrove. Aloha to Arkala at that time, Barry Aldridge of Water Eaton.
Still, it was exquisite planning on the prescient pair’s part to have shark repellent… in a helicopter.
By the time of the first Tim Burton movie in 1989, I was turning 20 and genuinely enthused and curious to see how a serious portrayal of Batman would work all those years later. Happily, cinema chum Judi and I caught a late night preview at the Milton Keynes Point, ostensibly the UK’s first modern multiplex, and the portents were good, not least of which was the project was being soundtracked by none other than the purple regnant Prince himself. Get the funk up!
Amid a veritable tsunami of 24-carat box office draws, Batman found itself competing with James Bond (though in its bank manager iteration courtesy of the charisma-free Timothy Dalton), Lethal Weapon and Ghostbusters sequels plus the third Indiana Jones featuring Sean Connery and partly filmed nearby at Stowe School.
Yet we walked away fairly impressed, even if all those vibrant Warhol and Lichtenstein colours and crooked camera angles we had been raised on had been replaced by darkness and disgrace. When I skipped into work at Bletchley Park the next day I told anyone who appeared interested it was “like a darker Superman” (no shit Sherlock!), the Christopher Reeve connection all the more pertinent as scenes for his fourth and final turn as Clark Kent’s flying nom de guerre had also been shot in our town, including my old science class the year after I swapped bunsen burners for wax taper lighters at college.
After that, I had something of a hit and miss attendance with subsequent films. I understood why the lunchbox-ready catchphrases were jettisoned for grittier cinematic artwork and nightmarish villains like Two-Face, who hadn‘t appeared in a comic book story since the 1950s yet I felt my interest waning. For 1992’s Batman Returns I was on a backpacking expedition across Europe and only saw it some time later on a fuzzy telly in East Acton, though I’ve always been partial to Face To Face, the beguiling and under-appreciated tie-in tune from punk stalwarts Siouxsie & The Banshees.
Ushering in the oft-panned Joel Schumacher duology, for 1995’s Batman Forever both my sister Stella and I happened to be in Bucks, effectively house-sitting for our parents — she on a break from university at Derby and me travelling up from West Hampstead for a tempestuous couple of days.
With Val Kilmer having replaced Michael Keaton in the title role I remember we caught his one-take turn back at our old haunt The Point but, to be honest, I can remember nothing of the movie except thinking Kilmer’s lips were eminently missable, and the snazzily T. Rexish theme song Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me was one of the best things U2 have done. Even more so 30 years down the line.
By 1997’s Batman & Robin, I have to confess that even though gorgeous George (as in Clooney) and my birthday twin Chris (as in O’Donnell) are the star turns I have no memory of seeing it anywhere, though it’s entirely likely I took one look at Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr Freeze on the poster and decided I was washing someone’s hair that month. Either way, Clooney is regularly lambasted and has even apologised publicly for his phoned-in disconnected and strangely hollow performance, and the whole sorry fourth instalment marks a low point in comic book adaptions generally.
Reinvented for a new century, Christopher Nolan’s take on the beloved character gave Gotham City and its multiple characters a distinctly darker and bloodier edge. In much the same way Daniel Craig’s 007 was portrayed in his last three Bonds, the Dark Knight Trilogy introduced a weathered and insecure Caped Crusader (played superbly by Christian Bale), who struggles to keep crime rates down in his beloved city all while trying to keep up the appearance of his billionaire businessman persona by day and vengeful vigilante alias by night.
It goes without saying that the superb supporting cast of Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, and Cillian Murphy were all pretty faultless, though my one over-riding memory of the whole shebang was a very late night London showing of The Dark Knight at the gargantuan IMAX at Waterloo and being disturbed by an outrageously impertinent Frenchman sitting behind moi who decided to take a call on his mobile 20 minutes before the credits rolled. I’d have sent Heath Ledger round to sort him out if he wasn’t already dead.
Have there been Batman films since? As with the ubiquitous Marvel Universe, crossovers and all the other clickbait collaborations I’m sorry but there are times my childhood hero has to remain frozen in time, despite enjoying a spin-off Joker in Dublin to escape the Irish rain.
Ben Affleck and Robert Pattinson? Holy Cow, that’s two of my least favourite actors right there, right now.
Holy takeover! I think I’m outta words.
Steve Pafford
