LEGION - Pictured: Dan Stevens as David Haller. CR: Chris Large/FXDavid Haller is a troubled young man suffering from advanced paranoid schizophrenia, seeing things and hearing voices.  But when a young woman enters his life at the institution where David is treated, everything starts to change – can he trust anything?

In a sea of ‘me too’ comic book TV and film, where every other release seems to feature some superhero or other, and they’re all dark, brooding physicality or light, fluffy wisecracks, Legion marks somewhat of a departure.  Easy viewing this is not, and there is not even a hint of spandex in sight.

That’s not to say that we don’t see fantastical powers on display in this feature length opener – there’s telekinesis, mind manipulation and more to be seen here, but this is a show that takes its subject matter seriously.  It earns those big payoffs with a careful, considered build up, and when it gets there, it doesn’t linger on fancy FX shots or feature length slow motion set pieces.  Legion treats the display of powers almost with disregard, as if they’re more a part of the background furniture than a key part of proceedings, at least in a visual sense.

In fact, it’s not until well into the latter half of this pilot episode that anyone even uses the term ‘powers’, with lead protagonist David having been so thoroughly convinced by an endless parade of doctors and therapists that he is simply a mundane schizophrenic that even he himself disbelieves the evidence of his own eyes during his ‘episodes’. The addition of details like the creepy, mysterious figure that appears at the corner of his vision whenever gripped by one of these episodes only adds to this.

And on those visuals – don’t misunderstand me when I say that the powers are not front and centre. This is a show that uses visuals carefully and to great narrative effect.  David’s own disorientation and confusion are represented not just by the stop/start tendency of the narrative as it jumps back and forth through his own life, but also through the confused mash up of visual style.  Characters are often clothed in 60s/70s style fashion with hairstyles to match.  The sets themselves and even the camera filter all lend to this subtle atmosphere of age, juxtaposed with modern technology and terminology.  It all clashes in a way that reinforces the broken nature of our main narrator and his mind, and whereas it could be off-putting it actually remains weirdly compelling, inviting the viewer to accompany the main character on his journey and try and discover exactly what is going on.

It’s a show that is going to clearly require thinking and engagement to follow – it lacks the flashy ‘look at me’ visuals of other shows in the genre, and whereas there is humour there, it’s of an infinitely bleaker and blacker variety than its rivals.  Unlike Daredevil, it doesn’t simply rely on a profusion of violence and profanities to get across the ‘adult’ nature either – there is the odd curse word here and there, and certainly some blood, but nothing to rival the darkest moments of the Netflix series.  Tonally then, it occupies an odd space in a crowded genre – set up to tie in with the X-Men universe but darker and less overblown than that franchise has become on the cinema screen, and yet not quite occupying the grittier underbelly of the Netflix and DC series. Because of this, it may struggle to find an audience, but for me the early signs here are promising – in a sea of also-rans, Legion may well be a contender.

Verdict: Don’t come to it looking for some light popcorn fluff, nor angsty overblown ‘darkness’, and you won’t be disappointed.  This plays like a genuine psychodrama which happens to have ‘powered people’ as its subject matter.  It’ll make you think and you’ll need to concentrate hard to follow it, but the payoff at the end of this opener is most definitely worth it. 9/10

Greg D. Smith