In the new Netflix drama Supacell, a group of young Black men and women from South London discover that they have superpowers. One is now strong enough to smash open a cash machine with his bare hands, while another can run from London to Edinburgh in only a few seconds. But even though the speedster compares his newfound gifts to those of the Flash, the show that Supacell most reminded me of wasn’t any of the retired Arrow-verse series from the CW, nor anything the Marvel Cinematic Universe has put out over the last five years. Instead, the most obvious analogue is Heroes, the mid-Aughts NBC drama about a group of people from around the world who developed unusual “abilities.”
Several Supacell characters have identical power sets to prominent Heroes figures, like time travel and teleportation, or the power to duplicate other people’s powers. Both shows offers glimpse of an apocalyptic future that only its protagonists can stop, both feature intentionally bland government agents trying to capture and control the supers, and both have a largely self-serious tone offset by one lighthearted character, and at first both are primarily interested in what a normal person would do if they discovered they had godlike gifts.
Of course, Heroes didn’t invent any of those ideas. But in 2006, it had the superhero TV lane almost entirely to itself. The young Clark Kent adventure Smallville was still around, and a Blade series had just concluded its first (and only) season only days before Heroes debuted, but these were niche products on less-watched channels. In those years after the early Spider-Man and X-Men movies, but before the MCU completely reshaped pop culture, there was an obvious demand that had mostly gone unfilled on the small screen. Heroes became an instant smash as much for what it was about as for how it actually told its stories; the underwhelming first season finale made clear that the show wasn’t so great at the latter, and it soon went from phenomenon to punchline.
Supacell was created by rapper-turned-filmmaker Rapman, whose real name, Andrew Onwubolu, perhaps sounds less well-suited to making such a project. It arrives in a marketplace where the overwhelming supply of superhero content has clearly outstripped demand, and where teasers for upcoming Marvel and DC projects are first met with skepticism or fatigue rather than giddiness. So it can’t get by just on its subject matter. It needs a distinct hook, and execution, to distinguish it from the competition.
That all five leads are Black South Londoners is something of a hook. There have, of course, been other recent films and series with Black heroes and predominantly Black ensembles, but Rapman leans in on his home turf, and on the cultural and socioeconomic forces that have shaped his five heroes. Michael (Tosin Cole) is a delivery truck driver, engaged to social worker Dionne (Adelayo Adedayo). Sabrina (Nadine Mills) is a nurse. Andre (Eric Kofi Abrefa) is an ex-con struggling to rebuild a relationship with his teenage son. Rodney (Calvin Demba) is a struggling weed dealer. And Tazer (Josh Tedeku) is a would-be gangster whose powers develop at a convenient time for a war with a bigger, more established crew. All of them are connected not only by their newfound superdom, but by the neighborhood where they keep crossing paths well before Rodney turns out to be an off-brand Flash.
But the interpersonal material is all fairly generic. The performances are all fine, with Josh Tedeku and Eric Kofi Abrefa making particularly strong impressions in underwritten roles. Supacell understandably wants the audience to feel invested in these characters and their everyday problems before all the telekinesis and such exponentially complicates their lives. It’s just not hugely interesting. The six-episode season simultaneously feels too long and too short, dragging its heels to get to the part where the leads are regularly interacting and using their powers in exciting ways, then ending right when the story finally has real momentum.
And the powers are exciting, at least. Rapman directs many of the episodes, with Sebastian Thiel helming the others, and they and their collaborators have a clean, vibrant aesthetic for how things should look when, say, Rodney is moving at top speed, or when two or more characters with powers are fighting. It’s all done on a modest scale, yet at times more impressive than the action in some recent MCU shows.
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That Supacell improves as it goes along is perhaps the thing that most distinguishes it from Heroes, which started off strong and soon fizzled. But it doesn’t do enough to distinguish itself from our current overpopulated superhero TV landscape.
Supacell begins streaming June 27 on Netflix. I’ve seen all six episodes.
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