TV Series: Heroes

It's been a while since I posted anything. My regular readers will know what that means. Instead of films I've been watching television series. In particular, over the last week I've watched the third and fourth seasons of "Heroes".

I expect most of my readers know this series, since it was one of the most successful and critically acclaimed television dramas of recent years. It tells the tale of people who live among us who have super-powers, or, as the show calls them, "abilities". Some of them are good, some are bad, so we see a world divided into heroes and villains. In the opening episodes we get the impression that these people with abilities are independent of one another, but as the series develops we see that they are all inter-connected, though few of them realise it.

The series was very popular, watched by more than 10 million viewers per week in the first season, but the viewing figures dropped later, and it was cancelled after the fourth season. Why did the audience lose interest? I personally find the later seasons just as compelling as the first season. I see one big problem: the complexity of the stories. There are a lot of different characters with different interwoven story arcs. It's easy to follow if you're watching the series on DVD, but how could viewers keep up if they were only watching one episode per week? People would need to make notes to keep up. On several occasions there were cliffhangers which weren't resolved until two or three episodes later. This was an unusual way to structure a television series. It is more suitable to comic books, because the reader can go back and flip through the previous issue if he's forgotten the reason for something happening.

The stories were complex in themselves. Characters were travelling backwards and forwards through time, changing events. Apart from simple abilities like flying or super strength, some characters were capable of copying, stealing or removing the abilities of others. Some characters had abilities which changed during the course of the series. Some good guys turned bad, and bad guys turned good. How can anyone keep up if he's only watching one episode a week?

I advise everyone to buy the DVD box set, which is now available relatively cheap. If you watch just one episode you'll be drawn in and have to watch them all.