Raising Dion began as a short film born of comic writer Dennis Liu’s desire for a more representative array of superheroes than has been gifted us by America’s homogenous “golden age”. It went viral and now the story of a black, widowed mother bringing up a seven-year-old boy with increasingly astonishing powers has been transmuted into a nine-part series on Netflix.
It has the charm and heart of Smallville, which filled the family-friendly (if not diverse, save young Superman’s friend Pete, played by Sam Jones III) slot for the last generation that Raising Dion is designed for. Newcomer Ja’Siah Young is another of those amazing child actors the US seems to produce so effortlessly. And, as recently bereaved and unemployed mother Nicole, Alisha Wainwright manages to cover bewilderment, grief and fear for her suddenly extraordinary, and therefore extraordinarily vulnerable, child in a way that will make parents ache for her without alienating the youngsters who surely form the show’s main audience.
The latter – and the child inside each of us – can thrill at the many and pleasing special effects: floating milk and cereal, Lego whirlwinds, fish rising in bubbles of water out of a lake as Dion explores his telekinetic abilities, last-second zooms out of the way of trucks as teleportation kicks in under stress. And they are only made more wondrous by the realism of the rest. When Nicole loses her job, she loses her medical insurance, and their first trip to the pharmacy to refill Dion’s asthma inhaler is a horror. Smallville never made such points, but the times they are a-changing.
For them, too, are the stories of building friendships and coping with the minor treacheries and betrayals school life brings. The relationship that gradually builds – at her formidable insistence – between Dion and wheelchair-user Esperanza (Sammy Haney, another revelatory child actor, who has brittle bone disease) is particularly touching. In one episode, a storyline revolves around him learning why he should not use his powers to levitate her against her will. You can imagine it starting many an interesting and potentially valuable discussion among watching families.
Michael B Jordan does double duty as the show’s executive producer and Dion’s late father (though his body was never found, folks! Just saying.) He is seen in flashback and was a man always on the hunt for new discoveries and a bit of a Heath Robinson-esque inventor in his garage. He supposedly died saving a stranger, Charlotte Tuck, during a hurricane, though when Nicole finds Tuck’s name and number – uh – tucked away in an old shirt of her husband’s as she clutches it for comfort, the mystery of quite what happened deepens.
There might not be much, narratively, that is new to adult viewers – but is there ever? Still, it is a fresh twist and the evocation of incorruptible Spielbergian innocence that is maintained by centring the show on such young protagonists is restorative to the ageing, battered soul, even if the head cries out that it could have been compressed into six episodes to no detriment and probably quite some benefit. For younger viewers it will all be new. And, as with all superhero stories, suitably ancient at the same time. That is their ageless delight.
