Adam West not only was Batman, in this series he was straight man. His straight face was always what held thing together. No matter how outlandish Robin or a super criminal was, West would always appear to take things in stride & have a straight face when he would pull something out of his utility belt to handle the problem. Burt Ward's Robin was often reactive with many Holy Blanks!! & while he was mostly a sidekick for Batman, sometimes when the Caped Crusdaer was tied up, he & the faithful Alfred would manage things. To me the criminals were most often the stars of this. Burgess Meredith made a great Penguin - especially when he runs for mayor of Gotham City against Batman and proclaims "I should have gotten into politics sooner because in campaigns, all my dirty bird tricks are legal now!" Imagine that, & this is before Nixon got caught.
Frank Gorshin's Riddler has never been equaled. Ceasar Romero's Joker was so good that Jack Nicholson had to take the character in new directions in the film to avoid direct comparison. The amazing thing about this series was the amount of great actors & actresses they got to play the criminals. It is a who's who of character actors from that era. Alan Ladd, Vincent Price, Otto Preminger, Art Carney, Roddy Mcdowell to name a few villains.
This was an ABC series which would have lasted longer, but CBS had such a power house line-up, this was lucky to make it 3 seasons. At least they were 3 great seasons & all in color. The cliff hangers & fights from these are now classic, & some of the plots were pretty corny, while others showed imagination. Overall, just think of Robin saying "Support your police!" & Batman responding "Well said, Robin." and you get an idea that while the series was corny, it at least had a moral compass always. Holy establishment, Batman!
