Heroes Season 1 Overview

Spoiler free!

Heroes is coming to the Sci-Fi Channel on February 19 (although you could watch it online from the 12th) and later to BBC2. But what is it? To quote Wikipedia:

Heroes is an American drama television series, created by Tim Kring, which premiered on NBC on September 25, 2006. The series tells the story of several people who “thought they were like everyone else… until they woke with incredible abilities” such as telepathy, time travel and flight. These people soon realize they have a role in preventing a catastrophe and saving mankind.

The series loosely follows the writing style of American comics by doing short, multi-episode story arcs that build upon a larger, more encompassing arc. Even with small story arcs that move the story forward, Kring said he mapped out where he intends the show to go for the next five seasons.

When the series premiered in the United States, it was the night’s most-watched program among adults 18-49, attracting 14.3 million viewers overall and receiving the highest rating for any NBC drama premiere in five years.

The show is airing in America and when it starts over here I’ll be reviewing each episode, but having seen about half the series I thought I’d give you some impressions.

Firstly, don’t do what I do and spot the actors from every other TV show and film you’ve seen. It started to infuriate me for a while and I had to stop it and go to imdb.com to find out who she was (Final Destination by the way).

After that I started to enjoy myself. I’m not going to give any spoilers away here don’t worry, but the show is really intriguing from the start. A show about people with superpowers immediately makes you think of special effects and amazing stunts, but they’re few and far between. The most you get in the earlier episodes is the cheerleader (Claire) healing herself from horrendous injuries and there’s some great stuff from the Japanese guy (Hiro) who can teleport and stop time, but the show is about stories and characters.

The catastrophe that needs adverting is revealed early on thanks to the visions of the future, junkie Issac has been painting. Heroes has been compared to Lost, but here is the distinctive difference - there’s a goal for the characters. I became invested in the characters quickly as I want to know how they’re going to stop this event, while at the same time (like Lost) wondering what’s going on.

At first each character has his or her own story but increasingly characters start to cross each other, sometimes without them knowing - but they’re all linked by Mohinder Suresh - an Indian scientist trying to carry on his murdered father’s work on evolution.

And there’s also seems to be a definite bad guy. Well two actually which seem to be separate and one may have special powers as well.

So it all starts with a lot of promise. As I said I’ll be looking at each episode in a bit more detail (you can sign up for our daily email here and/or weekly email here), but make sure you watch it on either channel when it starts, it’s the next big thing. Expect Sky to snap it up soon!

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