'Gotham' star Taylor delights fans with his Penguin.

• Author: Moore, Frazier
• Position: Living

Byline: Frazier Moore

NEW YORK -- Although filmed in the real Gotham City, Fox's "Gotham'' inhabits a New York all its own. What resides here is part reverential mythmaking (it recounts Batman's genesis), part free-floating film noir (whose 1940s manners coexist with '60s-vintage cars and circa-'90s cellphones). It's a hybrid dreamscape in meticulous limbo.

"I can't believe I'm here,'' says Robin Lord Taylor.

But he is, looming large as a shrimpy, gimpy psycho with oversize plans and the cunning to execute them. He is Oswald Cobblepot, better known as emergent arch-criminal the Penguin, and since last fall's premiere of "Gotham'' (airing Mondays at 8 p.m.), Taylor has stolen every scene in reach, certifying himself as the greater-among-equals in a splendid cast that also includes Ben McKenzie, Jada Pinkett Smith, John Doman, Donal Logue and many more.

As the Penguin, he is highly stylized, with fashionable downtown duds, inky hair and a leering smile. But Taylor delivers more than broad comic-book strokes. Even infused with a toadying creepiness, Oswald flourishes as a sympathetic chap, the guy you can't help rooting for. He's the show's most vulnerable, winsome figure, even more so than Bruce Wayne, the orphaned future Batman played by young David Mazouz.

Portraying the Penguin in his inchoate stage, Taylor has been free to bring the role a fresh approach. This began with the audition.

"They wrote a fake scene with fake names that put the character in a sort of organized-crime situation, but it wasn't identified,'' Taylor explains. "My agent only told me the night before that I was up for the Penguin in a show called 'Gotham.' But by then I had already made my choices for the character. I knew what I was going to do at the audition and I did it. I guess that was what they were looking for.''

What Taylor delivers is a striver, schemer and survivor who had been bullied his whole life. His shimmying...