REVIEWED: SEASON 1 (ALL EPISODES) | WHERE TO WATCH: ALL 4
Let me lay my cards on the table: this writer hates Harley Quinn. Or rather I hate what she’s become; when Paul Dini introduced her into Batman: The Animated Series she was a delightful foil for the Joker, a Robin to his Batman. But then Suicide Squad happened and Harley Quinn was everywhere, and there just wasn’t enough to her to support all that. Fundamentally, Harley Quinn is a murderer, and at the very least she is an accomplice to acts of terrorism on a scale that would dwarf 9/11 or the Aum Shinrikyo attack on the Tokyo underground. To succeed as the lead of her own story, Harley has to be sympathetic, an anti-hero, the same fate which befell her Marvel counterpart Deadpool, and that should make fans of comic books, raised on Spider-Man and Superman, very uncomfortable.
With all that in mind, Harley Quinn was all set to be the first DC Universe offering that I had zero plans to watch, but then a funny thing happened; people said it was really good… and it is! This is a show that doesn’t shy away from the fact that Harley – and the other villains she pals around with – kill people without a second thought. It’s gory and brutal and very, very funny.
The show opens with Harley still under the yoke of The Joker, but beginning to grow tired of his shtick. When he sacrifices her again to make a getaway, even Batman is questioning the health of their relationship, ensuring that Harley has plenty of time to consider her status with another stay in Arkham. Still, The Joker will break her out soon, right?
The Big Bang Theory’s Kaley Cuoco is perfect as Harley, and her friendship with Lake Bell’s Poison Ivy is the heart of the show. But this is also a show about Harley wanting to be taken seriously – ironically – as a villain in her own right, and yearning for the membership of the Legion of Doom that will prove it. To achieve her aims, Harley recruits some henchmen in the shape of failed actor Clayface, tech genius King Shark, and Doctor Psycho, who even the Legion of Doom disowned after he called Wonder Woman the ‘C’ word.
Harley’s crew – and the other villains they encounter, such as a ridiculous Bane obsessed with explosions, and a Casanova Kite Man – are hilariously written, and brilliantly voiced, with top-notch work from Alan Tudyk, Ron Funches, Tony Hale, and JB Smoove hitting the majority of the jokes for a home run.
The planned first season of twenty-six episodes was split into two thirteen-episode seasons, with the second having recently begun on DC Universe in the States, and the split works, with a natural story beat finishing out the thirteenth episode in spectacular fashion. Along the way, Harley gets trapped in her own mind, crashes a Bar Mitzvah, gets a highway built in her name, and visits her very dysfunctional family, and we see her throw down not only with Batman and the Damian version of Robin, but also Aquaman, Batgirl, and even Superman; while the tone of the show may not pass muster with the usual DC animated fare, this is a show very much set in the DC universe.
Harley Quinn is a great example of what DC Universe has been doing well. The vast majority of their original programming so far has been smart and accomplished, a whole world away from their inconsistent and fractured cinematic offerings. An animated show for adults, but without taking some of the usual, lazy shortcuts, it’s genuinely funny, and a must-watch for anybody who likes comics. And violence. And swearing. Lots of violence and swearing.
