Batman: A Horse of Another Colour

"I did a little extra-curricular crime detecting while Dick Grayson was doing his homework."

Well, that, if you forgive the lamentable lack of a cliffhanger, was rather splendid. In fact, suspiciously so. I'm now convinced that the problems we've seen this season can be laid entirely at the door of the decision to move largely to standalone single episodes. Not only, at a time when the budget has been cut, does it needlessly increase costs by demanding new costumes and sets each episode, but it takes away the main attraction of the show. Batman is awesome because of its high camp silliness, its deadpan riffs on the absurdities of its own tropes. There's not much time for all than in twenty-four minutes, but in two episodes there's penty. Because this two parter, while perhaps not quite being the best ever, has brought all the fun back again, made possible by having time to breathe.

Hence we get to enjoy Barbara Gordon being the ridiculously sensible and goody-goody librarian, and Penguin looking for a buyer for his stolen folio of parasols in the "Saturday Review of Parasols"- and failing yet again to notice "A.L. Fredd".We get some more priceless dialogue between Penguin and Lola. And we get the silliest horse race imaginable.It's all enormous fun.

But we end with a massive hint that the next (single) episode will feature the splendid King Tut- but will we have enough time in one episode to enjoy this fun character...?