Extraordinary (Hulu US, Disney+ UK & ANZ, 2023)
Posted: Sun Jan 01, 2023 5:24 pm
I was hanging in the chat of a certain Youtube livestreamer from the West Bank affectionately known as The Rabbi from Another Planet
(some of you may be familiar, he's a Heroineburgh fan) when he began reading randomly from the latest issue of SFX Magazine.
And in the corner of one of the pages, there was a blurb about an upcoming superhero TV show called Extraordinary.
Not having heard anything about previously, I figured I'd look it up. There's a Wiki, but without much information other than just
the basics: it's an Irish superhero comedy with the somewhat faulty premise that sometime about 10 years in the past, everyone
over the age of 18 suddenly received superpowers, and then subsequently, everyone receives superpowers automatically on their 18th birthday.
So, pretty much everyone in the world has superpowers? Or did I not understand the premise correctly, and did people just start receiving their superpowers ten years ago, as they attained the age of 18? (Which would mean anyone who was over 18 as of 10 years ago did *not* get superpowers? It's not clear if everyone was 'grandfathered' in, or not.)
That's confusing enough, until you think about the randomness of this happening. Why would age 18 somehow be the random cutoff for this phenomenon? It's not like all over the world, everything is equally adult at age 18. There are different levels of majority and adulthood in different cultures and countries, right? The 18 cutoff seems a bit Western-centric, and maybe even a bit Anglo-Saxon centric at that.
And there's the why, how, who and wherefores. Who gave everyone in the world these powers? Why did they do that? How did they manage to pull off such a feat? And how is each power assigned? Do people get powers based on certain inclinations and innate tendencies? (The old Heroineburgh method of epigenetics) Or is there no rhyme or reason, with people getting powers at random? I would think inquiring minds would like to know all of these things when such a premise, with holes big enough to drive a truck through, is dropped on a viewership.
But hey, maybe none of that matters, because you probably wouldn't have heard about this show if I hadn't told you just now, right? I mean, there's a trailer on Hulu, and the exact same trailer on Disney Plus UK and ANZ. But hardly anyone has seen these trailers (less than 250K views total), and the debut episode of this series is only 3 weeks away: JANUARY 25. So, not very good promotion on their part, I'd say.
In the meantime, we've got the rest of the premise tied to the lead actress, Mairead Tyers. She's a moderately attractive zoomerlennial named Jen, who never got her powers at 18. How the powers that be messed that up when they got to everyone else isn't explained yet. But apparently all of her friends and co-workers have powers (I seriously don't know how civilized society goes on from there, so I guess I'll have to watch to find out). So she goes on a mission to find out how to get her powers.
The 'name' actress in the show is an Irish matron by the name of Siobhan McSweeney, who is apparently famous for playing a disciplinary nun in a show called "Killing Eve".
Here's all the other links I could find about the show, which aren't many.
This is the 'first look', which only shows us one singular photo of Tyers.
https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sci-fi/ex ... ewsupdate/
This is the official announcement about the show trailer on Deadline, which only shows us one other photo of Tyers.
https://deadline.com/video/killing-eve- ... mma-moran/
Here is the trailer from Hulu. On Youtube, commenters are comparing it to Hero Academia, Encanto, and a UK show from 2009 called No Heroics (which I never heard of, and I'm about to check out now..is there even a thread about it on SHF??), as well as a less harsh version of Misfits. However, the first thing I thought of was NBC's Powerless - you can even clearly see in the trailer, the word "powerless" comes up at 1:20! It's also basically the premise of a comic book from J. Michael Straczynski called Rising Stars, except in that book only 120 people got the powers.
I don't see any evidence at all of superhero costumes, let alone the tight spandex kind that some of Jen's friends and co-workers could be wearing. So I'll make sure to watch the first episode to get the general gist of what's going on, and if there's no promise of costumes in that episode or future ones, I may bow out. Check it out on the debut date of January 25 and see for yourself.
[Update: 'No Heroics', a superhero comedy show from 2008 from the UK, is not available to watch. Anywhere. Unless someone has an idea?]
(some of you may be familiar, he's a Heroineburgh fan) when he began reading randomly from the latest issue of SFX Magazine.
And in the corner of one of the pages, there was a blurb about an upcoming superhero TV show called Extraordinary.
Not having heard anything about previously, I figured I'd look it up. There's a Wiki, but without much information other than just
the basics: it's an Irish superhero comedy with the somewhat faulty premise that sometime about 10 years in the past, everyone
over the age of 18 suddenly received superpowers, and then subsequently, everyone receives superpowers automatically on their 18th birthday.
So, pretty much everyone in the world has superpowers? Or did I not understand the premise correctly, and did people just start receiving their superpowers ten years ago, as they attained the age of 18? (Which would mean anyone who was over 18 as of 10 years ago did *not* get superpowers? It's not clear if everyone was 'grandfathered' in, or not.)
That's confusing enough, until you think about the randomness of this happening. Why would age 18 somehow be the random cutoff for this phenomenon? It's not like all over the world, everything is equally adult at age 18. There are different levels of majority and adulthood in different cultures and countries, right? The 18 cutoff seems a bit Western-centric, and maybe even a bit Anglo-Saxon centric at that.
And there's the why, how, who and wherefores. Who gave everyone in the world these powers? Why did they do that? How did they manage to pull off such a feat? And how is each power assigned? Do people get powers based on certain inclinations and innate tendencies? (The old Heroineburgh method of epigenetics) Or is there no rhyme or reason, with people getting powers at random? I would think inquiring minds would like to know all of these things when such a premise, with holes big enough to drive a truck through, is dropped on a viewership.
But hey, maybe none of that matters, because you probably wouldn't have heard about this show if I hadn't told you just now, right? I mean, there's a trailer on Hulu, and the exact same trailer on Disney Plus UK and ANZ. But hardly anyone has seen these trailers (less than 250K views total), and the debut episode of this series is only 3 weeks away: JANUARY 25. So, not very good promotion on their part, I'd say.
In the meantime, we've got the rest of the premise tied to the lead actress, Mairead Tyers. She's a moderately attractive zoomerlennial named Jen, who never got her powers at 18. How the powers that be messed that up when they got to everyone else isn't explained yet. But apparently all of her friends and co-workers have powers (I seriously don't know how civilized society goes on from there, so I guess I'll have to watch to find out). So she goes on a mission to find out how to get her powers.
The 'name' actress in the show is an Irish matron by the name of Siobhan McSweeney, who is apparently famous for playing a disciplinary nun in a show called "Killing Eve".
Here's all the other links I could find about the show, which aren't many.
This is the 'first look', which only shows us one singular photo of Tyers.
https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sci-fi/ex ... ewsupdate/
This is the official announcement about the show trailer on Deadline, which only shows us one other photo of Tyers.
https://deadline.com/video/killing-eve- ... mma-moran/
Here is the trailer from Hulu. On Youtube, commenters are comparing it to Hero Academia, Encanto, and a UK show from 2009 called No Heroics (which I never heard of, and I'm about to check out now..is there even a thread about it on SHF??), as well as a less harsh version of Misfits. However, the first thing I thought of was NBC's Powerless - you can even clearly see in the trailer, the word "powerless" comes up at 1:20! It's also basically the premise of a comic book from J. Michael Straczynski called Rising Stars, except in that book only 120 people got the powers.
I don't see any evidence at all of superhero costumes, let alone the tight spandex kind that some of Jen's friends and co-workers could be wearing. So I'll make sure to watch the first episode to get the general gist of what's going on, and if there's no promise of costumes in that episode or future ones, I may bow out. Check it out on the debut date of January 25 and see for yourself.
[Update: 'No Heroics', a superhero comedy show from 2008 from the UK, is not available to watch. Anywhere. Unless someone has an idea?]