If you are male and not some sort of deviant, you will know that The Dark Knight, the new Batman film, is out this week. If you were organised, you would probably have some sort of calendar counting the days until its release. You will certainly be singing, “Dinner-dinner-dinner-dinner, Dinner-dinner-dinner-dinner, Batman!” every time you walk into a pub. Or that could just be me. I don’t walk into pubs very often these days - you’ll see why in a minute.

In the meantime, let there be no doubt: this is shaping up to be the best Batman. It could even be a contender for the best bloke movie of all time (BBMOAT): up there with the Bournes, the Bonds, The Matrix, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Fight Club, Goodfellas, Reservoir Dogs and French Connection II. Even, and I know this sounds unfeasible, Heat.

It will be better than Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman, which was pretty brilliant if you ignore Jack Nicholson’s ballroom dancing with Kim Basinger at the end. It will certainly be better than the three after that, when our superhero dressed increasingly in a tutu and liked musicals. According to early reviews, it is better even than Batman Begins, the one when Batman went properly bats thanks to the inspired director Christopher Nolan and the ultimate method man Christian Bale.

It has all the components to be the BBMOAT. It has car chases. It has high-tech gadgetry. It has gratuitous explosions. It has silly back stories. And it has a supervillain so supervillainous that he may have contributed to the untimely death of the actor playing him. Michael Caine, playing Batman’s butler for the second time, said Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker was so frightening, he sometimes forgot his lines.

Heath Ledger tipped for Oscar

Black carpet rolled out and talk of a posthumous Oscar at the unveiling of Heath Ledger film The Dark Knight

• The Dark Knight: the first review

• Heath Ledger: The Times obituary

• Heath Ledger died from accidental overdose of prescription drugs, autopsy concludes

Related Internet Links

• Dark Knight trailer

• Dark Knight featurette

• Sky News special report

Background

• Final farewell to Heath Ledger

• Batman Begins

• Who is the best big-screen comic book hero?

Related Internet Links

• 10 things that make Dark Knight the best Batman ever

• Interview: Batman's Special Effects wizard

• Batman Begins: Blu-ray competition

This is perfect BBMOAT material, but there’s a problem: my wife knows Batman’s out this week too. One of her more muscly female friends, it appears, also likes Batman and globalled a link to the trailer. She clearly believes that everyone should like Batman, which, if you ask me, is a burnt bra too far.

The problem specifically is that I get one free pass a week. On one night each week, I can “go off”, as my wife puts it, “and do pointless, blokey things like sitting in a pub all evening not talking about anything interesting at all”. Friends without kids say this is a terrible deal given that we live in a free country. These friends know nothing about what it is to have children. I am lucky to be allowed out at all.

Stupidly, though, I went out three nights in a row two months ago and I’ve never caught up. A stag weekend was the final straw and I am under house arrest for the next six weeks. It’s not quite Burma but it’s serious.

I could always try lying. Unavoidable work engagements, for example, are exempt, but I tried that with The Bourne Ultimatum, let some of the plot slip in my sleep and got fined three free passes the next morning because I’d said I was “at a presentation”.

I could pretend a close friend has broken up with his girlfriend and needs to be comforted, but she’ll only sense a falsehood and make me sit on bamboo until I confess.

I could wait until she goes out on a yoga excursion (exempt from the system because “yoga is important”), drive the child to the grandparents, hand them a suitcase of hush money and go to the cinema. But the child will babble about how Grandpa turned into an elephant that flies (“silly Grandpa”) and the game will be up.

So unless anyone has a better idea, I will just have to wait for the DVD. And start negotiating early about how many films with romance and philosophy and subtitles I will have to sit through to watch The Dark Knight.

Until then, I don’t want to know if it is the BBMOAT. Keep it to yourselves, free men of the world.