Heroes: (l-r) Sendhil Ramamurthy as Mohinder Suresh, Ali Larter as Niki Sanders, Hayden Panettiere as Claire Bennet, Greg Grunberg as Matt Parkman, Masi Oka as Hiro Nakamura, Milo Ventimiglia as Peter Petrelli. Photograph: Isabella Vosmikova
*** WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD ***
Every so often, a new TV show becomes a breakout hit. A couple of years ago it was Lost; this year it's Heroes. And for my money, Heroes is the only one that will go the distance. I watched the first season of Lost, but three episodes into the second series I gave up - it just kept going around in circles (which I guess is pretty easy to do on an island).
Heroes - showing in the UK on Sky's Sci Fi channel and due to air on BBC2 in the summer - has been compulsive viewing from day one, and acclaimed by critics and audiences around the world. Its basic premise - ordinary people suddenly find themselves with extraordinary powers and abilities - means we can relate easily to its ensemble cast. Comic book in style and tone, it's not a typical superhero show - there are no spandex costumes and no big-budget fight scenes. Much like The X-Files, everything takes place in the real world; it's just the characters that are slightly off-centre.
And what a bunch of characters it is - among them are cheerleader Claire, who has the power of regeneration (in an early episode she wakes up to find herself in the morgue, halfway through her own autopsy); policeman Matt, who can read minds; artist Isaac, who can paint the future; politician Nathan, who can fly; and my favourite, Japanese office worker Hiro, who can manipulate the space-time continuum.
Now, if Lost had characters who could fly or muck about with space and time, they'd already be off that damned island and back home with their feet up. Unlike Lost, when Heroes has flashbacks they actually drive the plot forward, rather than throwing up even more unanswered questions. Speaking of which, Heroes' writers respect their audience enough to answer the questions that crop up. Viewers have already met adopted Claire's real parents, even though she has yet to learn who her father is. We know who season one "big bad" Sylar is, and why he's killing the heroes one by one (it's to absorb their abilities). And the mysterious oft-mentioned gangster Linderman finally pops up in episode 18 - portrayed by none other than Malcolm McDowell. (The stunt casting in Heroes is genius - George Takei, Star Trek's Mr Sulu, is Hiro's dad; and former Doctor Who Christopher Ecclestone is Claude, the invisible man.) The optimist in me fully expects the big question - how did everyone get their powers? - to be answered by the end of season one.
What could really give this series longevity, though, is the recent announcement by creator Tim Kring that the second season "will constitute a new volume in the multi-volume series, with new characters and an entirely new storyline". Which could well mean either that the current crop of characters is killed off, or volume two takes place in a different country. Just as long as they don't all end up on the Lost island.
