Fox&#39;s Gotham TV series is going to be Batman: The High School YearsS

Were you hoping that Fox's Batman prequel TV series Gotham would be a tough crime procedural set on the mean streets of Gotham City? Or were you hoping it would be about teenaged Batman, The Joker, Catwoman, Riddler, and the Penguin all hanging out together? Because it's the latter.

Sorry, I threw up in my mouth a little there. Fox chairman Kevin Reilly crushed the dreams of many a Bat-fan at Fox's panel during the network's Television Critics Association press tour earlier today. "This is all of the classic Batman characters," Reilly continued. "It follows the arc of how they all became what they were. I've read the script its really good. It's going to be this operatic soap that has a slightly larger-than-life quality."

Apparently, the plan is exactly like Smallville, in that the show will show how each character, good and bad, become the hero or villain we all know today, and Reilly says the show will end when Batman puts on the cape for the first time.

A few thoughts.

• The art above is from the Gotham High "concept" art by Jeff and Celeste. Which looks like a much, much more fun way to do the concept of teenage Bat-characters.

• I'm having a hard time articulating why I have such a problem with a show that imagines all of the Batman characters together as teens, when I really didn't have a problem with Smallville. But I do.

• Fox didn't say all the characters will belong to the same high school, but I can feel it in my bones. I don't know how all the teens are going to be running into each other all the time unless they have a central location in common.

• Why do all these network execs have hard-ons for superheroes outside of their costumes? It's so annoying.

[Via EW]