Production values get you nothing when the writing is as atrocious, and the people in charge as bad, as what Gotham has. Plus, I'd argue the talented actor thing. I haven't watched it in awhile, but as someone who thinks Stephen Amell is a legitimately good actor when he has good material, I'd say he definitely beats (just off the top of my head) Gotham's Gordon, Bullock, Penguin and Ridder in the acting department. But, in the end, Gotham's people don't understand any of the Batman characters at all. At least Arrow's crew used to understand Green Arrow. I mean, yeah, if I was forced to choose between watching Season 4 Arrow or Gotham, I'd choose Gotham, but that's not a compliment, its the (barely) lesser of two evils at this point. They may be mangling the Batman mythos over at Gotham, but at least they don't have Felicity
That's not entirely true. Good production values give you good eye candy, and, when paired with really good actors, they can make a show at least reasonably fun to watch even with bad writing. Especially when, like Gotham, the bad writing usually isn't that apparent in any one episode - the dialogue and scene building is great, it's the long term plots and effects that are painfully stupid. And I don't want to say that every actor on Arrow is terrible just because Arrow is terrible - I haven't seen any of them in anything else, so maybe some of them are great in another context. But they're not in that context.
I'll give Arrow a lot of crap, but I can't say that terrible acting was ever a complaint I had. I mean, some are weaker (Laurel probably being the weakest of the regular cast) but when they had good writing, the acting was solid.
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