Batman: Caped Crusader

Fans of Batman: The Animated Series who want that same approach with a harder, more violent edge will feel at home. Gotham looks like a 1940s crime picture in art deco lines, and one case sends Batman and Detective Montoya through a film studio after a vanished movie star and a masked avenger. Bullock and Flass, two cops on the mob's payroll, make the police part of the problem.

Each episode mostly opens a new case, with season-long threads tightening in the back half, so it works in short sittings.