You may be tempted to dismiss “The Penguin” as just another superhero spinoff in this age when intellectual property is king.

But the new eight-episode dramatic limited series — an offshoot of director Matt Reeves’ 2022 film, “The Batman,” debuting this week on HBO and streaming on Max — is more than that.

While the Gotham City-set gangster show does not reach the heights needed to stand shoulder to shoulder with another HBO series taking place within the world of organized crime, “The Sopranos,” it is a fairly interesting character of its titular figure.

And it benefits from a terrific performance from Colin Farrell (“The Banshees of Inisherin,” “Sugar”) as Oz Cobb, aka “the Penguin,” the mid-level criminal he portrayed in “The Batman.” Yes, the body suit and prosthetics go a long way toward making the well-known actor all but unrecognizable, but Farrell’s city-hardened vocal delivery, unusual mannerisms and penguin-like gait also help him disappear into the role.

Strong work also is turned in by Cristin Milioti (“Palm Springs,” “Made for Love”), as Oz’s primary rival in the story, Sofia Falcone, and by Tony Award-winner Deirdre O’Connell, as Francis Cobb, the mother Oz adores and strives to please and whose deteriorating mental state is a strain on him.

“The Penguin” takes place shortly after the events of “The Batman,” which included the destruction of Gotham’s sea wall by the Riddler, whom Oz refers to as a “(expletive) madman.”

The movie also saw the death of powerful crime boss Carmine Falcone, for whom Oz worked, with a power vacuum resulting. Carmine’s son Alberto (Michael Zegen, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”), who has had well-publicized struggles with substance abuse, is set to lead the family. It shouldn’t be too much of a spoiler to reveal Alberto’s reign is short-lived, the young man pushing Oz too far in a conversation in the series’ opening minutes.

“Pop always said you were a good soldier — that’s what he liked most about you,” Alberto says. “But he also knew you were a dirty soldier who skims money off the top.”

Alberto goes on to say that Carmine appreciated that Oz was smart about it, never taking too much, and that Dad knew what it meant for a guy like him to get his piece of the pie.

He doesn’t stop there, however, and, well, you can guess what happens.

In the aftermath, Oz encounters Victor Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz, “Runaways”), one of a few neighborhood youths trying to jack his car. Instead of killing the teen, he takes him under his wing, seeing something familiar in him; Victor, too, is damaged — he struggled with a stutter — and, like Oz, has never had anything handed to him. He also sees potential.

While another of Carmine’s sons, Luca (Scott Cohen), takes over the family business, largely run by the capable Johnny Viti (Michael Kelly, “House of Cards”), Sofie reenters the fold after a lengthy stint in Arkham State Hospital. Believed to have killed several women using a specific method, she has become known as “The Hangman.”

“I’ve been rehabilitated,” she tells Oz.

Hmm.

The only person who regularly visited her in the prison full of unstable characters was Alberto, and she suspects Oz — her one-time driver — of being responsible for his disappearance.

Do not expect Oz and Sofia to be at odds at all times as “The Penguin” progresses, for the former is a master manipulator and adept at saying whatever he needs to extract himself from the prickly predicament du jour. He will take allies — whom he can potentially betray down the road — where he can get them. He even attempts to find them within the rival Maroni family, run by the incarcerated Salvatore Maroni (Clancy Brown, “The Shawshank Redemption”) and his wife, Nadia (Shohreh Aghdashloo, “The Expanse”).

With showrunner Lauren LeFranc ("Chuck," "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.") steering the ship, “The Penguin” traffics heavily in flashbacks as it moves forward. Along with spending time with Oz as a child, we go back a few years with Sofia, for sequences that include a few with her father, played in the series by Mark Strong, as well as some with Oz driving for her. All are informative.

“The Penguin” is at its most engrossing early on, thanks to the excellent first episode, “After Hours,” penned by LeFranc and directed by Craig Zobel ("Z for Zachariah," "The Hunt"), and the two Zobel-helmed installments that follow it. However, the series does lose some steam after that, feeling — as so many streaming projects do — that it is, perhaps, two hours longer than needs to be for the story it tells.

Still, the overall quality is pretty high, with Farrell, LeFranc, Zobel and Reeves among those credited as executive producers.

“The Penguin” effectively brings us back to Reeves’ Gotham. It remains a dirty, dingy and dark metropolis, a place where fires rage at night in the pouring rain.

Batman being nowhere to be seen throughout the eight installments serves as a reminder that one man — even the world’s greatest detective, highly skilled as a fighter and driven to prowl the night — can do only so much in the face of so much crime.

Like Batman, however, Oz is one man making his mark on the city, for better or worse. While the series never feels — refreshingly — that it is building up the Penguin to be Batman’s next great foe, build him up it does.

Given a scene in the reasonably strong finale, “A Great or Little Thing” — a moment we feared since the first episode but then convinced ourselves wouldn’t actually happen — he is a man not to be underestimated.

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‘THE PENGUIN’

3 stars (out of 4)

Rating: TV-MA

How to watch: Premieres 9 p.m. ET Thursday, Sept. 19, with subsequent installments debuting at 9 p.m. Sundays (and streaming on Max)

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