Do you want the good news or the bad news? OK, the good news is that Batman: The Animated Series is now on Netflix… the bad news is that it’s only the first season, for now.
While most of you are getting excited about the DCU, and upcoming DC movies like The Batman 2, there’s only one thing you should be thinking about right now if you’re a fan of Gotham’s greatest hero. Lock your doors, turn the lights off, and get cozy because you’ve got 50 episodes of the best animated series of all time to get stuck into.
As part of the slew of content that is new to Netflix in November, the first season of Batman: The Animated Series is now available to subscribers of the best streaming service. If you haven’t seen it before, why?? If you have, watch it again; it’s worth it.
Among those 50 episodes is a personal favorite of Kevin Conroy’s — the Batman actor behind the show — with an episode titled ‘Perchance to Dream’. Obviously, as one of the best ’90s TV shows, there’s a whole host of incredible episodes in Batman: The Animated Series, but ‘Perchance to Dream’ is right up there as one of the highest rated on IMDb, so it seems Conroy has great taste.
The episode sees our favorite DC character knocked out and waking up in an alternate reality, where his parents are still alive and he’s happily married to Selina Kyle. Sadly, Bruce Wayne isn’t allowed nice things, and it all turns out to be a rouse set up by the criminally underused Batman villain, the Mad Hatter.
On his love for this particular episode, Conroy said: “My favorite episodes of the show are the ones that deal with the complexity of the man, of Bruce Wayne. ‘Perchance to Dream’ is a wonderful episode… any episode that dealt with that psychology that makes up Batman, I love.”
It’s an episode my colleague, Anthony McGlynn, is also very fond of. Discussing ‘Perchance to Dream’, he commented: “The episode lays bare the tragedy that forever drives Batman; he can never rescue himself from his own life. Therein lies our connection to him, because perhaps the only meaningful thing pain gives us is a reason to prevent more of it happening to others.” Very profound, and very correct, too.
By far the most fascinating elements of Batman as a character are the way his machinations are fuelled by his tragic past, and the way Bruce Wayne and Batman co-exist with such complexity. ‘Perchance to Dream’ nails this better than most Batman movies have over the years, so if you’re tired of filmmakers not quite hitting the mark with the Caped Crusader, Netflix can fix all that.
Mind you, it’s worth watching the DC movies in order again just for The Dark Knight, isn’t it? Not only is it one of the best superhero movies ever made, but Christopher Nolan perfectly captures the weight of that dual life Bruce Wayne leads. For more from DC, you should learn about Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters, and new movies like Superman Legacy.