‘Supacell’ Review: Netflix’s South London Superhero Drama Has Potential Despite Its Familiarity

Returning to the immigrant/foundling turned Superman, the superhero genre has often been used to explore what happens when people from more or less disenfranchised groups find themselves with unexpected levels of power . Whether the result leads to heightened altruism or diabolical megalomania, it’s the difference between a hero and a villain.

Not all audiences are so eager to read for the subtext, which has led to recent stories that push subtext to the surface and superpowers occasionally to the background, whether the goal is to make the pre-existing and stubborn public understand (see X-Men ’97), to make it clear to an audience who probably never watched in the first place (the ephemeral The power) or to make a low IQ potato understand (season four of The boys)

It’s the genre narrative equivalent of a bacon-wrapped date. I’ll let you decide, in this metaphor, which is the chewy, salty protein (the subtext, probably) and which is the gooey sweet (the superhero thing, I suppose). And maybe you only like bacon or maybe you only like dates or maybe you like them both but don’t like them together which is crazy because dates are made to be wrapped in bacon and that’s what happens when I write a review after skipping breakfast.

As The powera series that you probably completely forgot existed or didn’t know existed in the first place, this one from Netflix Supacell is a series that could easily be considered the latest in a long line of shows and movies (and an even longer line of comics) about a group of seemingly ordinary people who develop seemingly extraordinary abilities.

Let your introductory reference point be something like Hero — a lot of weight to give a series that was a certifiable phenomenon for the better part of a single season and then… wasn’t — or The Umbrella Academyno one, including the producers of these shows, would deny a high level of familiarity with the genre.

It’s a familiarity and a comparison that benefits and hurts Supacell, from the British multi-hyphenated Rapman. You’ve seen so many shows like Supercell that it’s generally impossible to be surprised by any of the things the show treats as twists, and that many of the more inevitable elements play out in unnecessarily prolonged ways over the course of the six-episode first season.

But yes, beat by beat, Supacell looks like every superhero show you’ve ever seen, the way it unfolds and unfolds is completely distinctive. Genre is genre, but the tone and feel that Rapman sets and the characters he builds are different enough to be worth it, even if the series remains largely notable for its emerging potential after these six episodes.

Supacell is a piece of genre revisionism that fits into what has become a subgenre in its own right, namely: “Take a type of story that traditionally exists in white spaces and move it to South London to see what is happening. » See also, Attack the block And Rye lane (among others).

Written and directed by Rapman, the Supacell the pilot takes its time arriving at a destination that is the premise of the show. We begin by meeting Michael (Tosin Cole), a package delivery driver in a sweet long-term romance with Dionne (Adelayo Adedayo), while struggling to help his mother continue her battle with sickle cell disease.

Then there’s Nurse Sabrina (Nadine Mills), sister of Sharleen (Rayxia Ojo), who has really bad taste in men (both of them do, actually). Nearly homeless Rodney (Calvin Demba) tries to create a market as a kind, low-level weed salesman, but he’s not very good at it. Ex-convict Andre (Eric Kofi-Abrefa) wants to keep a job and develop a relationship with his teenage son. And Tazer (Josh Tedeku) is just trying to stay alive, leading a small gang of tower kids into an escalating rivalry with a larger, more violent gang.

In a moment of peak happiness, Michael makes a shocking discovery: his eyes glow yellow and he can teleport. In fact, he can do a lot more than teleport. He can pause time and travel backwards and forwards in this dimension. During an accidental jaunt into the future, he learns that Tazer, Andre, Rodney and Sabrina, four people he has never met, also have powers, only to encounter a group of faceless figures in hoodie and Dionne is only three months old. of death.

Before he can say, “Save the social worker, save the world,” Michael begins a quest to find and unite this group of super-powered strangers to save the woman he loves. I’ll let viewers discover most of the superpowers on their own, though. Supacell works mostly from the first page of the manual – strength, healing, speed – rather than digging as deep as, say, Hulu’s delightful book. Extraordinary.

Oh, and meanwhile, we keep occasionally cutting to a mysterious laboratory in which a number of other people presumably with powers are trapped in cozy but sealed cells. It’s hard not to notice that the people with powers, both in the outside world and in the lab, are all black and the people in control are mostly white, including Eddie Marsan’s Ray, who is seen walking to watch everything in the opening of the series. scene and doesn’t appear again for a long, long time.

I would say that Supacell was Hero Meet Hulu’s New High-End Romantic Comedy Queen though I felt like there was a lot of overlap between these two audiences. Either way, Rapman doesn’t just want to give visibility to a part of London that is far removed from the more conventional “Hey, look, it’s The Gherkin!” perspective on the city, but exploring the cultural and economic diversity of South London.

Our main characters reflect a wide range of black British experiences, some struggling against poverty and some eagerly approaching middle-class comfort, some with names that speak of Caribbean or African roots and others from backgrounds biracial.

The characters all face varying levels of adversity and all realize that superpowers can only confront and overcome certain societal and institutional failures. Maybe telekinesis can help you fight off menacing sexual pests, but it’s pretty useless in the face of discriminatory hiring and promotion practices.

From the slang-based scripts – turn on your subtitles – to the catchy, hip hop-infused soundtrack to the immaculate cinematography, Supacell has the feeling of a story that could only spring from this location and these characters, rather than a series that recognizes London exclusively for its symbolic globalism. Each neighborhood depicted in the show appears vibrant and lived-in, regardless of the tax bracket of its residents.

Plus, everyone in the cast is relatively unknown – apparently if I watched the British soap opera Hollyoaks I would know a few – is a solid find, similar to Tubi’s body of work. Boarders, another recent example of how South London is transforming a staid genre. Cole and Adedayo look like stars and have a warm chemistry that anchors the series, while Kofi-Abrefa and Tedeku have a looming intensity that suggests their characters could turn good or bad depending on the circumstances. Demba’s performance tends in the sense of humor, but when we know his past, he quickly gains empathy.

Supacell has the distinction of being a great superhero drama if its actual superhero attributes weren’t so average. The way the characters vaguely cross paths before their inevitable team-up underlines the small-world feeling of South London and there’s a certain elegance to the way Rapman and fellow director Sebastian Thiel cross paths.

There’s also some frustration, as fans know the different directions these origin stories can take, and Rapman relies on as many tropes as he subverts. While you’ve seen better and worse versions of the action set pieces and special effects spectacle, you’ve seen comparable versions, and lots of them.

It is only in the finale that Supacell really starts to come together, as the series begins to clarify the origins of our heroes’ powers as well as the identities and motivations of their adversaries. This puts viewers in a position that, as is often the case in Supacellis pretty familiar: I’m telling you to watch the show for its potential, which seems obvious and sufficient to me, but if you wait for the show to reach its potential before tuning in, a second season will never materialize.