This September, tune in to Fox for the premier of Gotham, the latest interpretation of the Batman saga.  This is the first Batman-related show to appear on Fox since Batman: The Animated Series, which aired from 1992-98.

Falling in line with Frank Miller and Christopher Nolan’s vision of a darker, meaner Batman, Gotham focuses on Detective Jim Gordon in his early years.  It is meant to explore the origin stories of the prime characters on Gotham’s police force as well as some of its more prominent villains, including The Penguin, Harvey Dent, Catwoman, and Poison Ivy.

The show will follow Detective Gordon as a young naïve rookie, sent straight from his childhood home in Gotham’s idyllic suburbs to the dark underbelly of Gotham city.

It features his encounters with Gotham’s villains before they were villains (the trailer allows us a few second’s glimpse of a teenaged Selina Kyle, a young Poison Ivy, and Oswald Cobblepot, all before their rise to law breaking), and his budding friendship with young, recently orphaned, Bruce Wayne.

Of course, no Batman origin series is complete without reference to the death of Bruce Wayne’s parents, shot by a mugger in an alley, or his decision to avenge their deaths. While the main character is Gordon, the series will also focus on Wayne’s evolution from boy to Batman.

Christopher Nolan’s coup de grace, The Dark Knight Rises (2012), will be a tough act to follow for any future Batman renditions.

Fans will certainly be watching with a critical eye to see what road producer Bruno Heller (The Mentalist, Rome) will take these iconic characters down, especially in the case of the most volatile and significant villain, The Joker. The show has already made the minor alteration of changing Poison Ivy’s real name from Pamela Isley to Ivy Pepper. For some fans, this could be foreshadowing of more changes to the Batman mythos later on in the show.

Some might take issue with the idea of changing the backstories of characters whose identities have been so firmly established, but for me, I think that without some tweaks to the story, it will become stale, and predictable.

There are few who would want to watch a show about characters that they think they already know everything about.

 The show premiers on Fox on Sept. 22.