Michael, a South London delivery driver, has big plans for the future with his girlfriend, Dionne… until he starts to develop powers he never knew he had. But he’s not the only one whose life is inexplicably starting to change.

Another superpower show? If our screens are to be believed, to stand out from the crowd these days you need to have no super human abilities whatsoever. With this in mind, I confess to having a heavy heart as I embarked on the first episode of Supacell, Netflix’s latest addition to this overcrowded genre.

Fortunately, writer-director Rapman (aka Andrew Onwubolu) sprinkles enough South London authenticity onto the series opener to overcome my superpower fatigue. In the initial thirty (entirely naturalistic) minutes Rapman introduces us to no less than five central protagonists, each with multiple friends and family, plus assorted potential villainy (well, I’m guessing that Eddie Marsan isn’t there to play Father Christmas). It’s a hard trick to pull off, bravely holding back on the VFX, but only once did I get slightly lost as to which strand I was following. Indeed, it was so deftly executed, that when the superpowers finally started to emerge in the closing act, I was fearful that they might get in the way of the skilfully assembled multi-strand drama which by now had me fully engaged.

Of course, underpinning the series is the show’s foundation in a diverse black British community, each superpower sharpened as a response either to racial injustice or as a fearless critique of internal cultural pressures. How well this fusion of form and context will be fulfilled I am yet to see, but as Michael (Tosin Cole), newly engaged to the love of his life (Adelayo Adedayo), is confronted with his primary challenge I do at least sense that his superpower can drive his personal narrative rather than be the cheat that superpowers so often are in screen story telling. And the subtle seeding of a unifying counter-storyline about sickle-cell anaemia promises something even more thematically intriguing.

Verdict: The first episode of Supacell is pacy, refreshingly believable and asks all the right questions. Let’s just hope that the answers to come don’t disappoint. 7/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com