Fix: Superheroes on TV, Kooky British Kids, Wanting More The Umbrella Academy
Platform: Hulu
Hulu Summary:
Meet Kelly, Nathan, Curtis, Alisha and Simon, five unruly teenagers forced to do community service as payback for their crimes. When a freak electrical storm hits their town, strange things begin to happen to them and they soon realize they’ve turned into superheroes. Each of them possess a power they didn’t choose or want, a power which reveals each of their deepest, darkest insecurities. But while they just want to finish their community service and get through the challenges of everyday teenage life, fate has another task in store for them—they must save their town from the evil that has descended upon it. If you think life’s tough for your average superhero, it’s even tougher when you have a curfew …
FYA Summary:
A bunch of decent but kinda dumb teenagers who would have likely grown up to become normal, decent—if not upstanding—members of society, had an electrical storm not given them ridiculous superpowers, band together to figure out their new talents, battle those who would use their newfound talents for ill/evil, and complete their community service hours.
Familiar Faces:
Robert Sheehan as Nathan Young
If you’ve seen The Umbrella Academy, you will be fully prepared to meet Nathan, who’s honestly only slightly less damaged than Klaus. I would honestly be super surprised if I ever met Sheehan and he wasn’t an absolute MESS in real life. He just pulls these kinds of roles off so well. (But his wacky personality also makes for some of the best lines in the show.)
Iwan Rheon as Simon Bellamy
Let me preface this with: I’ve never seen Rheon in Game of Thrones, and I never want to. Hot Simon—I won’t ruin how he gets that nickname—is my favorite character in Misfits, and I really don’t want to have that ruined by Rheon’s uncanny ability to act like a Bastard.
Antonia Thomas as Alicia Daniels
Daniels voiced a Teletubbies character for 39 episodes. Antonia is not a Teletubbies character. (And she gets to reap the Hot Simon benefits.)
Joseph Gilgun as Rudy Wade
I really hated Rudy, specifically because he took the “lead” role from Sheehan’s Nathan. He is truly obnoxious, and kinda gross to boot. I have very little to compare this role to, sadly, so I can’t tell you if he’s just a great actor, or—like Sheehan—has been typecast.
Couch-Sharing Capability: Do The Maths
As this is a British Series, there are only 37 episodes over the course of 5 seasons, and each episode is only about 45 minutes. That’s barely more than one full day’s worth of watching. You could easily finish this up in a binge weekend.
And you might not even need to watch all five seasons. Full disclosure: I haven’t seen the last one and a half seasons or so, when the original cast mostly gets swapped out for other people. Although the series doesn’t completely wrap up at that point, I don’t feel like I missed out on that much? I might catch up some day?
Recommended Level of Inebriation: Cheers!
A visit to the pub is a pretty standard British thing to do, at least in pop culture, and they characters of the Misfits often end up in one. So bust out your pints and join in, if you so desire.
Use of Your Streaming Subscription: Save Me, Not Barry
I might have a copy of the first two seasons of this show in an obviously homemade case on my DVD shelf. And I might have tried to foist said DVDs off on a variety of people over the past decade. Therefore, I might be very glad that this show is available to watch via streaming, so that I can foist it on even more people and not look totally sketch passing my bootleg copies around like a total, well, misfit.
Please go watch this show on Hulu so that I can feel better about my checkered past.
