Batman has been a fixture of the superhero world since 1939, and since the 1960s, the caped crusader has been entertaining fans on television. That has included a wide range of shows, from the campy style of the original Adam West series, to darker spin-offs like Gotham, and plenty ofanimated showsfor both kids and adults alike. Just as many comics authors have put their own spin on Batman, TV creators have taken Bruce Wayne and his alter ego to some fascinating places that have helped define the character for generations of fans.
Over the decades, different TV shows have allowed creators to explore unique facets of the Batman character and expand the world of Gotham in the imaginations of fans. Shows likeBatman: The Animated Seriesintroduced beloved characters like Harley Quinn, while shows like Pennyworth tried out different genre approaches to the material.
With The Batman spin-offThe Penguin, starring Colin Farrell, set to premiere in just a few weeks on June 03, 2025 on HBO, we’re taking a look back at some of the best Batman shows to ever air on TV.
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8Pennyworth
Alfred gets an origin story
Pennyworth
Set in the 1960s, Pennyworth follows the story of a young Alfred Pennyworth, future butler to the Wayne family and Batman himself, Bruce Wayne. Jack Bannon stars as Alfred, who sets up a private security firm after his experiences as a soldier for the British SAS. The show is a prequel to Gotham, which also hails from creator Bruno Heller, and incorporates elements from the classic graphic novel V for Vendetta, including a modern civil war. The early seasons of the show see Alfred attempting to stop a fascist group called the Raven Society from taking over the UK government.
With more espionage plotting than the usual Batman story, Pennyworth proved that the hero’s universe can truly cross genres. In fact, one of the great features of the show is that it could easily be enjoyed by someone looking for a good spy series without even realizing it has anything to do with Batman. Despite being set in the Batman universe and acting as a prequel to another series, Pennyworth functions very well as a standalone action show.
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7Beware the Batman
Batman goes CG
Beware the Batman
Lasting only one season in 2013, Beware the Batman took the character into a whole new dimension: 3D. The show was the first iteration of Batman that used CGI rather than traditional 2D animation. While it was hardly the most impressive use of digital animation out there, the style allowed for some of the most dramatic and cinematic fight scenes in a Batman animated series.
Beware the Batman paired the dark knight up with sidekick Katana as they took on Gotham’s underworld. Instead of a typical episodic structure, the show also changed things up by following one continuous story over the course of the season. It also avoided using Batman’s biggest, most famous villains, instead focusing on lesser known baddies from his rogues gallery. Though it only lasted one season, the show left a real impression for Batman fans.
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6Super Friends
Classic Hanna-Barbera style
Super Friends
Super Friends doesn’t get enough love in the canon of DC superhero animation. Made in the 1970s and produced by Hanna-Barbera, the animation company behind The Flinstones and Scooby-Doo, the show is Batman and the Justice League at their most simple and lighthearted.
While the style of the show certainly feels dated, its retro charm is more than enough to make up for that. The animation is pretty rudamentary, and the characters don’t have much depth to them, but as a kids show about Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and other classic DC heroes teaming up to fight crime and save the world, it offers a whole lot of fun.
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Gordon goes crime-fighting
The O.C. actor Ben McKenzie starred as the iconic Jim Gordon in the Batman prequel series Gotham, which ran an impressive five seasons beginning in 2014. The series follows Gordon’s early days as a cop in the Gotham Police Department, years before he would become Commissioner. Bruce Wayne also appears in the show as a young man, following the murder of his parents, which Gordon is investigating.
Gotham featured a number of Batman’s classic villains, including the devious Hugo Strange, and a version of The Riddler, presented as a forensic pyshcologist named Edward Nygma, as well as a young Oswald Cobblepot, aka the Penguin. Along with being a solid detective series, Gotham helped to prove that there were plenty of stories to be told in the Batman universe that didn’t directly feature the caped crusader himself.
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4The Batman
A whole new look
The Batman
While Batman was still appearing in Justice League Unlimited, he got a brand new animated iteration in 2004’s The Batman. The show was set during his early years as a crime-figther. It also featured younger versions of his sidekicks Robin and Batgirl.
Very much aimed at a kid audience, the show nonetheless delved deep into the emotional lives of its characters, and could get pretty scary. It also featured a unique animation style with sharper edges and a more cartoon-y look, distinctly different from the more painterly style of Batman: The Animated Series. That helped to keep the show’s tone a fair bit lighter than the often more adult-oriented Batman: TAS.
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3Batman: The Brave and the Bold
The show that brought back the camp
Batman: The Brave and the Bold
Batman is often presented as a dark and brooding hero, but there’s a long tradition of a lighter, more campy take on the character. That’s what Batman: The Brave and the Bold tried to capture, with its very ’60s-inspired style and extremely comic book-y tone.
The show saw Batman regularly teaming up with other heroes to go on fun, crime-fighting adventures. It even spawned a spin-off crossover movie featuring Scooby-Doo! The fun, irreverent style of the show has made it a fan favorite since it first debuted in 2008, and even inspired a comic book series based on it.
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The original classic
Batman (1966)
For many years, the 1960s Batman series starring Adam West caught a lot of unfair flack. It was credited with making the Batman character into a cheesy joke, and in turn inspired creators to push the caped crusaders into darker and darker directions in comics starting in the 1980s, and many of the other movies and TV shows that followed. Returning to that original series, though, is a richly rewarding experience. The show was purposely campy, playing into the colorful style of the era, and deliberately satirizing comic book superhero sensibilities.
The show also featured many of the most iconic takes on Batman characters, including Cesar Romero’s version of the Joker, Julie Newmar’s Catwoman, Burt Ward’s Robin, and Burgess Meredith as The Penguin. Far from being a lame and dated iteration of Batman, the 1960s series, which also spawned a theatrical movie in 1966, is one of the best Batman properties of all time. Certainly one of the most purely entertaining.
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1Batman: The Animated Series
The cream of the crop
Batman The Animated Series
It’s hard to beat perfection, and Batman: The Animated Series is about as perfect as Batman adaptations get. Launched in 1992 in the shadow of Tim Burton’s blockbuster Batman movie, TAS brought that darkness into the world of animated Batman TV shows, quite literally. The backgrounds were painted on black paper in order to create its distinctive, Art Deco look.
More than 30 years later, Batman: The Animated Series still stands as the high watermark for what can be achieved with both the character and comic book storytelling for the screen.
More even than the visual style, though, TAS set itself apart with its often emotional stories developing the motivations behind many of Batman’s most iconic villains. The show would also often develop incredible new takes on regularly derided members of Batman’s rogues gallery, like in its iconic episode giving an emotional backstory to Mr. Freeze. TAS was also the first appearance of Harley Quinn, the Joker’s girlfriend, who has since become one of the most popular characters in the Batman universe. More than 30 years later, Batman: The Animated Series still stands as the high watermark for what can be achieved with both the character and comic book storytelling for the screen.
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