misfits - you can call me e4's bitch.*
* E4 is a British television channel aimed at younger (teen to thirty) audiences, their original series include the likes of Skins & The Inbetweeners. To be honest, I'm not entirely a fan of the channel, as I didn't even bother with Skins S3 and I like The Inbetweeners but think the show is pretty inconsistent. Regardless..
Yesterday & today I watched the first (and so far only) series of this..
Curtis, Alisha, Nathan, Kelly, Simon.
Misfits is about five delinquents doing community service, who get hit by lightning and discover they all have supernatural powers. Despite the wtf-y premise the show's actually pretty brilliant, as it's funny and gritty (cliché word choice here but bear with me), feels real and is dark in tone. It's dramedy with a bit of a sci-fi twist.
I really like how the superpowers take a back seat to the characters and though it's not easy for them adjusting to these powers, they don't spend an awful lot of time angsting about it. They just deal. The powers are pretty standard, hearing people's thoughts, controlling time, invisibility.. But the main focus is on these ASBO kids.
Oh and a fair warning: DO NOT READ THE WIKIPEDIA PAGE for this show. One of the characters only discovers their power VERY late into the series and the first line about that character in Wikipedia reveals their power. It was kind of lame to be spoiled that, though I don't think it took that much away from my enjoyment. (Goes without saying you're better off also not surfing the character Twitters.)
My favourite character is definitely Nathan, because I liked this character a lot when he was called Spike Thomson. Just kidding! But the similarities are striking as the actor looks SO MUCH like a young Dexter Fletcher (who played Spike) that I had to Google whether they were related. And both characters are extremely funny, mouthy, self-assured delinquents who one can't help but love despite their at times (or in Nathan's case, often) immature behaviour. Nathan is basically a more foul-mouthed Spike. And that's pretty great.
Then there's Kelly, the chav who can hear people's thoughts, and who I weirdly enough like quite a bit. Curtis is a former star athlete who can turn back time, and a bit of an odd one out as he hadn't really done much prior to the mishap that landed him doing community service. Alisha, whose power I'll discuss later, is just a sort of devil-may-care party princess, and Simon, who can turn invisible, is coincidentally a weirdo loner.
What I liked a lot was how the experience of the lightning storm and their subsequent powers brings them together (along with the mundane community service) but they don't become insta-pals with one another, nor a team of superheroes. Each episode focuses somewhat on one character more than the others, kind of like Skins, but Misfits does it in a less uniform manner. Though with Skins I always had this feeling that we've only scratched the surface with the characters, but with this one I feel more content, like we're seeing enough layers and whatnot.
It's not perfect, and sometimes the ways the storm affected others is just comically bizarre in a sort of really unbelievable manner, in an otherwise believable show. Another thing I really dislike is Alisha's power - she's seen as a flirty girl who knows people are attracted her, and like in a very cruel twist of fate, her power is to render people senseless with lust (for her) by touching them. This could be triggering for some people, because the people she touches completely lose control (and their memory, as they don't remember what they do), which is fine if she's willing, but if she's not .. well, you can imagine. There aren't a lot of moments of near-rape on the show but still, it's messed up and particularly annoying because it rids this character any chance of a healthy sex life, at least until she learns to control it.
This sort of thing kind of shows the show's written by a male (to generalize, but really now, wtf).
Anyway, one more thing I like is how they've so far managed to avoid the whole "where do these powers come from /what should we do with them" whatever bullshit that usually plagues these sorts of shows. I'm sure they'll go into it eventually.
Some spoilery thoughts, more for myself than anything. Alive six feet under. Nice. Sadly the Wiki spoiler totally robbed me of that emotional journey. Anyways, I watched a clip of Simon filming the Superhoodie (mysterious dude on a BMX bicycle) and that character being all like "You need to think about where your powers came from." Hmmmm. The thing is, I don't want them to organize themselves to save the world - doesn't feel realistic. Though I wouldn't object to a bit of helping out with the powers. But still, I loved the small-scaleness of it all. And one thing I definitely hope they do is keep the main characters at the center of it, and the rest of the people with power sort of as outsiders to the whole thing. Again, because I like the small-scaleness of it all, and because I'm sure they'll be proper fucked because of Simon killing Sally and they'll have that to deal with. I don't want the whole thing to get too out of hand.
And also because I don't want too much organization to walk into the picture. The show's great because of the way they deal with the whole thing, but are actually just busier dealing with their own lives and whatnot. Now they're honed together as not-quite-but-sort-of friends but it's not exactly unity built to last if there's suddenly tons more other youngsters coming into the whole thing. With that said, the Superhoodie is pretty intriguing.
I suppose so long as the root of their powers aren't aliens and series 3 of Misfits doesn't include a whole new cast (FU Skins!), I'll be happy, though.
Um. So yeah. Check it out. Any of you watched this already? Liked it?
Yesterday & today I watched the first (and so far only) series of this..
Curtis, Alisha, Nathan, Kelly, Simon.
Misfits is about five delinquents doing community service, who get hit by lightning and discover they all have supernatural powers. Despite the wtf-y premise the show's actually pretty brilliant, as it's funny and gritty (cliché word choice here but bear with me), feels real and is dark in tone. It's dramedy with a bit of a sci-fi twist.
I really like how the superpowers take a back seat to the characters and though it's not easy for them adjusting to these powers, they don't spend an awful lot of time angsting about it. They just deal. The powers are pretty standard, hearing people's thoughts, controlling time, invisibility.. But the main focus is on these ASBO kids.
Oh and a fair warning: DO NOT READ THE WIKIPEDIA PAGE for this show. One of the characters only discovers their power VERY late into the series and the first line about that character in Wikipedia reveals their power. It was kind of lame to be spoiled that, though I don't think it took that much away from my enjoyment. (Goes without saying you're better off also not surfing the character Twitters.)
My favourite character is definitely Nathan, because I liked this character a lot when he was called Spike Thomson. Just kidding! But the similarities are striking as the actor looks SO MUCH like a young Dexter Fletcher (who played Spike) that I had to Google whether they were related. And both characters are extremely funny, mouthy, self-assured delinquents who one can't help but love despite their at times (or in Nathan's case, often) immature behaviour. Nathan is basically a more foul-mouthed Spike. And that's pretty great.
Then there's Kelly, the chav who can hear people's thoughts, and who I weirdly enough like quite a bit. Curtis is a former star athlete who can turn back time, and a bit of an odd one out as he hadn't really done much prior to the mishap that landed him doing community service. Alisha, whose power I'll discuss later, is just a sort of devil-may-care party princess, and Simon, who can turn invisible, is coincidentally a weirdo loner.
What I liked a lot was how the experience of the lightning storm and their subsequent powers brings them together (along with the mundane community service) but they don't become insta-pals with one another, nor a team of superheroes. Each episode focuses somewhat on one character more than the others, kind of like Skins, but Misfits does it in a less uniform manner. Though with Skins I always had this feeling that we've only scratched the surface with the characters, but with this one I feel more content, like we're seeing enough layers and whatnot.
It's not perfect, and sometimes the ways the storm affected others is just comically bizarre in a sort of really unbelievable manner, in an otherwise believable show. Another thing I really dislike is Alisha's power - she's seen as a flirty girl who knows people are attracted her, and like in a very cruel twist of fate, her power is to render people senseless with lust (for her) by touching them. This could be triggering for some people, because the people she touches completely lose control (and their memory, as they don't remember what they do), which is fine if she's willing, but if she's not .. well, you can imagine. There aren't a lot of moments of near-rape on the show but still, it's messed up and particularly annoying because it rids this character any chance of a healthy sex life, at least until she learns to control it.
This sort of thing kind of shows the show's written by a male (to generalize, but really now, wtf).
Anyway, one more thing I like is how they've so far managed to avoid the whole "where do these powers come from /what should we do with them" whatever bullshit that usually plagues these sorts of shows. I'm sure they'll go into it eventually.
Some spoilery thoughts, more for myself than anything. Alive six feet under. Nice. Sadly the Wiki spoiler totally robbed me of that emotional journey. Anyways, I watched a clip of Simon filming the Superhoodie (mysterious dude on a BMX bicycle) and that character being all like "You need to think about where your powers came from." Hmmmm. The thing is, I don't want them to organize themselves to save the world - doesn't feel realistic. Though I wouldn't object to a bit of helping out with the powers. But still, I loved the small-scaleness of it all. And one thing I definitely hope they do is keep the main characters at the center of it, and the rest of the people with power sort of as outsiders to the whole thing. Again, because I like the small-scaleness of it all, and because I'm sure they'll be proper fucked because of Simon killing Sally and they'll have that to deal with. I don't want the whole thing to get too out of hand.
And also because I don't want too much organization to walk into the picture. The show's great because of the way they deal with the whole thing, but are actually just busier dealing with their own lives and whatnot. Now they're honed together as not-quite-but-sort-of friends but it's not exactly unity built to last if there's suddenly tons more other youngsters coming into the whole thing. With that said, the Superhoodie is pretty intriguing.
I suppose so long as the root of their powers aren't aliens and series 3 of Misfits doesn't include a whole new cast (FU Skins!), I'll be happy, though.
Um. So yeah. Check it out. Any of you watched this already? Liked it?