2. DO Make It Like The Wire And Boardwalk Empire
These two shows hit the exact tonal bullseye
Gotham should be shooting for.
Boardwalk and
The Wire both strike a balance putting an equal focus on law enforcement and the criminal underworld. But even more than that, they're both shows about cities and the people who live in them. We don't just get to know the characters, we learn about their families and their pasts and what causes them to do the things that are driving the plot. Fox's Gotham City, in my imagination, would be almost a perfect amalgamation between the shocking realism of
The Wire's Baltimore and the stylish tapestry of
Boardwalk's Atlantic City. That's right, I just used the word
tapestry. After all, the show isn't called
Gordon or
The Boy Who Would Be Batman, it's called
Gotham. We should be getting to know everyone in this city. For example, I know more about a minor character's daughter's fiancé on Boardwalk Empire better than I know about most of the main characters on Arrow. This level of character development is going to make Gotham City seem like a real place. Probably not a place we'd want to go to, but a real place nonetheless.