Before Alfred was Batman’s loyal manservant he was ... well he was still Alfred, but he was, like, way cooler. He did awesome spy stuff! The messes he cleaned up [puts on sunglasses] were international incidents with the fate of the world at stake.

At least that is the premise of the new series Pennyworth, coming to EPIX later this summer. On the show, Alfred (played by Jack Bannon) is still a young man, working for Bruce Wayne’s pops Thomas many years before Bruce’s birth. The show will show how Alfred became Alfred, and presumably why he’s so loyal to the Wayne family (and so oddly adept at sewing battle wounds and fixing Batmobiles).

Watch the show’s full trailer above; Here’s the series’ synopsis:

Bruce Wayne’s legendary butler, Alfred Pennyworth (Jack Bannon), a former British SAS soldier in his 20s, who forms a security company and goes to work with a young billionaire Thomas Wayne (Ben Aldridge), who’s not yet Bruce’s father, in 1960s London.

I do find it weird that there are some many Batman adjacent television projects, from Gotham to Pennyworth to the upcoming Batwoman to Titans on DC Universe. You have to go back to Adam West to find a live-action TV Batman. (There have been many cartoons in the interim, of course.) Do we really care that much about Batman that we’ll watch Batman shows that he’s not actually in?

That aside, Pennyworth could be fun. The cast is good. Bannon looks like he’s having fun with the role. Although it doesn’t appear to be the thrust of Pennyworth, I can envision an extremely fun television series about a fastidious butler who is secretly the world’s deadliest mercenary assassin. Pennyworth premieres on EPIX on July 28.

Gallery — The History of Batman Onscreen:

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