So Heroes is cancelled, but may come back as a wrap-up TV film. I only got into the first season, much like Lost, and then quickly lost interest. Most of my TV watching these days (The Office, 30 Rock, The IT Crowd) is done with the convenience of DVD boxsets. This new series from NBC sounds interesting though. Here’s the official description.
The Cape is a one-hour drama series starring David Lyons (ER) as Vince Faraday, an honest cop on a corrupt police force, who finds himself framed for a series of murders and presumed dead. He is forced into hiding, leaving behind his wife, Dana (Jennifer Ferrin, Life on Mars) and son, Trip (Ryan Wynott, Flash Forward). Fueled by a desire to reunite with his family and to battle the criminal forces that have overtaken Palm City, Faraday becomes The Cape his son’s favorite comic book superhero—and takes the law into his own hands. Rounding out the cast are James Frain (The Tudors) as billionaire Peter Fleming—The Cape’s nemesis—who moonlights as the twisted killer: Chess; Keith David (Death at a Funeral) as Max Malini, the ringleader of a circus gang of bank robbers who mentors Vince Faraday and trains him to be The Cape; Summer Glau (Firefly, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) as Orwell, an investigative blogger who wages war on crime and corruption in Palm City; and Dorian Missick (Six Degrees) as Marty Voyt, a former police detective and friend to Faraday.
It seems like a comedy rather than a drama, and these kinds of superhero parodies have been done before, as far back as Blankman (remember that film?) so we’ll see how successful The Cape is. The best types of stories like this are often in comics themselves, such as Caped from BOOM! Studios, Super Human Resources from Ape Entertainment or the excellent Justice League International run from the ’80s. Hopefully The Cape will be an interesting look at the cross over between comic book fantasy and ugly reality, and will not be filled with the kind of ‘wit’ that makes fanboys roll their eyes. It seems to have an understanding of the classic tropes of superhero storytelling, combined with an eye on the here and now, with the inclusion of an investigative blogger rather than journalist. Palm City, Chess and Vince Faraday all seem like names from a 1950s comic, but the twist of having bank robbers mentor the hero is an interesting choice.
