A shy teen must learn to control his power to turn invisible…

Zero came out of nowhere for me. I switched on Netflix one day and there it was, the trailer playing. I ignored it for a while as from the trailer it feels like just another superhero story and, honestly, I’ve seen enough of them to be able to tell you what’s going to happen from the opening beats through to the final credits and have grown bored. Just witness the rash of shows all commissioned independently but with almost exactly the same concerns with nary a spandex suit to distinguish them such as The Boys, Invincible and Jupiter’s Legacy.

However, one of the joys of working from home is taking a proper lunch and so one day I decided it could play while I ate. It was about halfway through episode 1 when I realised I’d judged the show by its trailer (if you’ll forgive me updating old sayings).

Zero is set in Milan and, perhaps unsurprisingly, is shot in Italian. It follows a second generation immigrant called Omar, a wannabe comic books artist, his family and the poverty stricken neighbourhood they live in.

Immediately it deals with some issues which are hugely interesting to me. Omar is poor but educated, ambitious but without connects and access. He’s also Black with a family who see themselves as from somewhere else, as strangers in a strange land.

After so many US shows and their seemingly indelible take on racism, the world Omar lives within presents the lived experience of a Person of Colour in a radically different context. The challenges Omar faces are clear and present but they’re so different to those experienced by people in the US.

Let’s be honest: Italy has faced some serious challenges about immigration from the Middle East and Africa – largely because of its geographical proximity. Its response has been profoundly mixed; with deeply racist right wing governments alongside the absolute opposite. It is also clearly not a country founded on the basis of White supremacy. These things lead to a different culture and it is, if not quite refreshing (how can the presentation of these stories ever be that?) then a welcome jolt to remind viewers that the US experience is not universal but is, in many ways, the extreme outlier.

Created by award winning comic artist Menotti, it is an origin story of sorts but really is more interested in how its shy and self conscious hero comes to grips not with his powers but with himself and the world he lives in.

The show starts with Omar living a life without real friends and increasingly isolated from his family. Indeed, his main plan is to escape the Barrio (the poor neighbourhood he lives in) and move to Paris or Brussels to write comics for a living.

Instead two chance meetings set his life on a completely different path. Instead of fleeing, he discovers he can act, that he can have agency. Omar learns that acting is not without consequence and certainly never easy – especially when the things he wants are contested by others trying to make the world they want to live in.

For what is often a light hearted show full of hope, Zero can deliver tension which leaves you gasping. I think this is largely because it successfully makes you care about the characters. Omar and the people he finds himself among live lives we recognise and have struggles that matter because we’ve all faced them to some degree.

What’s brilliant about the show is its portrayal of poverty. So often people assume poverty is a moral failing or something which can just be escaped with the right decisions but the show takes a more realistic approach. As the economist and philosopher Amartya Sen wrote – it’s about bandwidth. Zero shows us that when you have few resources and little bandwidth then any single setback can completely derail you regardless of the brilliance of your plan or how determined you are.

In one particularly superb sequence the building they live in has its power cut off. Although they eventually resolve this issue it takes days, leaves them further impoverished and the consequences of their actions mean that they replace one disaster with several (even if they’re smaller in nature). At no point are they able to clear the decks and take stock or rebalance. This is the tragedy of poverty without rose tinted sunglasses.

The lives Omar and his friends live feel authentic. This isn’t to award it a medal for its realism but to say this approach grabs you by the collar and makes the superhero elements really matter in a way that city destroying monsters can’t possibly hope to do despite the differences in scale.

The entire cast are superb but Giuseppe Dave Seke who plays Omar/Zero and Haroun Fall who plays Sharif are worth singling out for real praise. They’re given substantial material to work with and they really deliver something worth watching.

I don’t want to say too much more because you should see this knowing no more than it’s worth your time.

A last couple of comments though – firstly, the music is super and I’ve already gone to seek out some of the songs used in the show. Secondly – the script is great and doesn’t allow characters to make ‘bad decisions’ in the sense that you feel they’re always themselves. For a superhero show this is good work.

Verdict: I can wholeheartedly recommend this show and dearly hope it gets another season.

Rating? 9 invisible heroes out of 10

Stewart Hotston