Scott Wooledge

12 mins into episode one I checked my watch, it felt like an hour had passed — but in a good way. I couldn’t believe how quickly I was sucked in and totality invested and engrossed in the story! Watched three episodes now and it’s just amazing! He is such a great writer, director, story teller.

I caught this in USA on Peacock and find it an enjoyable watch. It’s kind of standard UK crime thriller fare but entertaining enough with beautiful landscapes and strong performances. I am trying to figure out who is the protagonist to root for, however, as everyone is pretty unlikeable. If a tsunami pulled the whole beach community out to sea that would be ok.

Starts off strong, if a little hokey. Devolves into boring repetition by mid season. The Code, which is basically, “Heroes don’t kill villains” isn’t interesting enough to warrant such constant debate. It defies belief that there is some kind of new, rising crisis around it in 2020s, as though villains didn’t also commit murder in 1920, 50s, 70s? What? JL wants to be a deconstruction of super hero tropes but pales in comparison to much better examples like The Boys and Invincible. Even the origin story expedition to the magic island feels like a less interesting rehash of King Kong. Seen it. And better. And the back and forth editing of past and present timelines becomes annoying, constantly breaking the momentum of both storylines. Overall pretty mediocre material that is at least elevated by a good cast doing their best. The performances at least got me through the season. I don’t lament the lack of season 2, except that what was probably the most promising plot—the evolution of a friend into super foe—was largely left to the next season, which will now never be produced.