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Why I Love...Heroes

Hayden Panettiere as Claire Bennet
  • Posted at 5:27pm
  • 27 March 2007
  • by DavidWhitehouse-RT
  • 4 comments

It's a question so commonly asked that you should already have a pre-ordained answer filed somewhere in the forefront of your lobes ready to pull out at a moment's notice. Which superpower would you most like to have?

Me, I'd like to be able to leap rooftop to rooftop with amplified strength and dexterity - like Spiderman but without all the sticky web nonsense. You?

In fact, given the fascination we hold for superhuman abilities, the bigger question is: why wasn't Heroes made before now? In television terms it's an open goal for ratings success. A series about a group of normal people who suddenly develop the ability to fly, or regenerate, or time travel...that's brilliant! That's something everyone wants to see, isn't it? Haven't all advances in special-effects technology been part of an ongoing effort to get to the point that a show like this could be made?

If you've not yet seen it, then you already have a special ability: superhuman patience. This show is great.

The basic premise is that a select group of men and women around the world wake up one day having taken a new step up the evolutionary ladder. So, we have a congressman who can fly like a bird, a cheerleader who is totally indestructible, a drug-addled artist whose paintings carry prophetic glimpses of the future, a policeman who can hear others' thoughts and so on.

Slowly they discover that they must combine their powers to save the world. Stripped down, it's simple good-versus-evil, survival-of-the-fittest stuff; Darwinism gone pants-over-trousers mental.

Each episode has its own narrative arc, whereby the chosen ones must deal with their new-found skills, and the plot is laced with cryptic clues as to future twists and turns. But it never feels, like the pacesetter for this brave new type of American drama, Lost, that its grand denouement is in the hands of a deranged orangutan who got a typewriter for Christmas. It feels epic. It feels exciting. It feels cool. It feels like the Boys'-Own fantasy stuff that grips the child in us.

And that's why we watch it, because that's what great television fantasy, from Doctor Who to The Tomorrow People (with which Heroes has a little in common), does.

Plus, it got me thinking. Maybe people with superpowers already exist? The ability of Steve Jones from T4 to bed the world's most beautiful women seems a little superhuman for instance, as does Simon Cowell's nose for a money-making idea. Not to mention Louis Walsh's otherworldly adeptness for maintaining a successful and lucrative career while clearly never having had an original thought in his life.

Still, every superhero needs a supervillain, don't they?

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Comments

  • Posted on 10 February 2009
  • at 9:01am
  • by Matt Martin

I also… Love HEROES

  • Posted on 08 October 2008
  • at 8:10pm
  • by Dan

Heroes takes my breath away at the new heights of banality it offers as TV drama. Pass me the remote (or the bucket.)

  • Posted on 22 September 2007
  • at 7:30pm
  • by kevin58

:-x Brilliant.

Tim Kring has bought us a truly impressive and gripping series. Its one hell of a sci-fi which I was glued to from episode 1.

By episode 10 "Six Months Ago" I was starting to get impatient: When were Hiro & Ando going to reach New York and meet up with the other (shall I say) gifted individuals? Yet "Six Months Ago" unravelled another layer of Heroes mysticism -showing us how they coped when first realising that they had unusual powers -beyond normal understanding! My mind piled on fresh expectation for future episodes and but for only having 1-5 (Terrestrial) TV channels, I would be well into episodes 11 & 12, which is the first Double episode week.

Alas, I must await the BBC2 weekly episodes, looking round the Net for a little spoiler, here and there, but not wanting to know too much before seeing the next episode.

Hiro, from Japan, is my personal favourite Hero. He's just begun to realise that there are limitations to his time-travel powers, as he is able to travel back in time yet is unable to change historical happenings. The future knowledge he has absorbed is most important to Hiro and the other Heroes.

Q: Is the Cheerleader now safe, what is her importance in the scheme of things and can the World truly be saved???

I sincerely hope that the BBC WILL Secure the forthcoming series' (2 and beyond) as its so nice to watch it without any commercial breaks to ruin the momentum of the action. I think it is important that there aren't any costumes/disguises, as it's an original idea that completely refreshes the Super-Hero concept, (for me) and I'm sure, millions of other viewers out there :-p

  • Posted on 21 September 2007
  • at 11:34am
  • by MazY

I'd made the mistake of convincing myself that Heroes would contain all the cheese and banality of Dr. Who, and so I didn't tune in.

Then, over the past weekend, the BBC aired the 'catch-up' of all the past nine or so episodes. To my eternal shame, I quickly became hooked. I admire the subtlety of the story. It would have been so easy to go wild with it -- given that we're playing with honest-to-goodness super-powers an' all. And come on, it's too hard to try and resist Hiro's character.

However, as I was watching it, I couldn't help feel that my new love-affair will be killed off by that all-too-common enemy of American serials -- number of episodes. Americans just don't seem to know when to stop. The shows just seem to go on and on and on; usually way longer than my boredom threshold will permit me to watch.

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