By Kim Filchak, writer and professional bibliophile.

In a move that surprises exactly no one Fox has officially picked up the Batman prequel series Gotham. We have been hearing about Gotham for so long one could be excused for thinking that the series was a done deal, but the ways of Hollywood are a mystery and so today we can bask in the knowledge that it is officially official.

Produced by Bruno Heller, the same guy responsible for The Mentalist and Rome, the series airing on Fox this fall will examine the origins of the characters that makes the story of Batman so iconic, including Ben McKenzie staring as Commissioner James Gordon when he was still a Detective (and not played by Gary Oldman). Other characters featured in the series will be a tween Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz), Catwoman (Camren Bicondova), the Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor) and the Riddler (Cory Michael Smith). Also on board is Sons of Anarchy’s (and more importantly Grounded For Life and Vikings) Donal Logue as Detective Harvey Bullock and Jada Pinkett Smith as Fish Mooney.

There have been some who question the point of a Batman series without Batman, but if the bazillion titles spun off from The Bat books is anything to go by there are a wealth of stories waiting to be told about the Spoiled Apple. But don’t take my word for it, Donal Logue spoke to IGN on the topic and had several very good points to make.

“It’s interesting because people will say, ‘What good is Gotham? A Gotham without Batman is stupid!,'” the actor acknowledged. “What’s fascinating about Gotham is like, what happened in the 20 years before Batman was so effed up that it needed a vigilante to come and save it — and those moral decisions have repercussions. Like, Gordon does stuff that seems to come from a good place, but you can do something and — this kind of goes back to the statecraft argument — say, in Vikings time, if I want to kill my enemy, I have to kill his kids. If I don’t kill sons, they’re coming after me and mine for the rest of our lives. So you’ve got to pull the root out. That’s something that Gordon struggles with, being that brutal. Then later, if some bad s**t goes down, you can say, ‘Well, that was your bighearted moment.’ It’s kind of mock politics, so it’ll be interesting to see. I’m super fascinated to see where a lot of these things go. The question is, how did we get there? How did we get to the point where we had to have a Batman?”

So there you have it, from Harvey Bullock himself, no Batman required. Not that we needed him to tell us that, since the show is a the moment one of the most anticipated shows for next fall.

You can read the entire Donal Logue interview with IGN here.