In sixties London, ex-special forces soldier Alfred Pennyworth is trying his luck as a security consultant and working as a doorman. A chance encounter with an American sets off a chain of events that will change his life.

I’m not exactly sure how many people were aching for a televisual origin story about Batman’s butler, but here we are anyway. Gotham ran for five seasons in its drawn out portrayal of the caped crusader’s formative years, so I guess it’s only logical that now we go back even further and see how his manservant became the man we know.

And to its credit, it’s a really decently made show. Leading man Jack Bannon plays a good mixture of tortured ex-soldier and capable man with (or indeed without) a weapon where necessary. There’s a fine line to be trod here, with a character who is good at violence but profoundly unsettled by using it, and Bannon manages to tread it perfectly, neither falling into maudlin dullness nor slipping into cliched ‘hardman’ at any point. He’s likeable from his first appearance on screen, and has a presence that means he never outstays his welcome.

Alongside him are former army buddies Dave Boy, a hard-drinking Scotsman with an unpredictable streak, and Bazza, a smooth-talking playboy whose easy charm belies his lethality. Though Dave Boy is a little bit of a cliché, Ryan Fletcher makes the part work, and the chemistry between all three, whether at a funeral or in the middle of a fight, is always entertaining to watch.

It all feels a little like a cross between Lock Stock and Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes set in a swinging sixties London, an impression not diminished by the presence of Jason Flemyng as Lord Harwood, the nemesis of our hero and an all-round bad egg. Throw in Paloma Faith as a sinister henchwoman and Ian Puleston Davies and Dorothy Atkinson as our hero’s long-suffering but surprising parents, and it all rather jostles along, making you barely notice the hour and a half this extended pilot episode runs to. Young actress Emma Corrin gets slightly less to do as love interest Esme, indeed there’s a general feeling about the character from her first appearance which subsequent events do little to dispel until very late on in proceedings, but Corrin makes her likeable and valiantly does good work with the weaker bits so she can really relish the better ones.

An interesting decision is that this one is a ‘mature’ rated piece of television, so there’s plenty of violence, occasionally graphic, and lots of coarse language and ‘adult’ themes. What’s good is that unlike some other comic book-based properties that take a similar note, it doesn’t just make use of that stuff for the sake of it. The violence, when deployed, is brutal and shocking, as it should be. The language just adds to the characters using it, one way and another.

Though it can’t resist baiting its audience with the earliest of nods to the overall franchise heritage of the character, it still looks very much like this will be – as our title character has it – a story of Alfred ‘being his own man’. If this opening episode is anything to go by, that man may be a lot more interesting than I would have previously imagined.

Verdict: Snappy, pacy, and with some excellent performances from its cast, this one isn’t suitable for the kids, but adult fans of the genre will find much to enjoy. 8/10

Greg D. Smith