With the long-awaited release of Netflix’s “The Defenders” — bringing together the heroes from the streamers four other Marvel shows Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist — we ranked all the current superhero TV shows on the air.
We wanted to like it, truly we did. But the only fist that made any real impression was the one the writers used to hit us in the head with clunky exposition. Regardless of any other issues swirling around the show — and there are plenty — if you make a martial arts show and you can’t supply really kick-ass martial arts sequences…. why?
This show is basically bananas, often in a confusing and messy way, but some of the performances make it worth occasionally trying to figure out what the heck is going on in Gotham.
Episodes of this show, which does do some fun stuff now and then, seem to pile up on our DVRs for reasons we can’t quite articulate. It’s not necessarily a bad program, but there’s just a *lot* of “Agents of SHIELD.” Weird request, but if it returns, how about it does so for a perky 10-episode run?
“Legends of Tomorrow” didn’t find its footing until the end of Season 1, and despite a marked improvement throughout Season 2, can still get caught up in the time travel trope of “saving/interacting with someone famous” too often. Still, despite the messiness of some of the plots, there are usually a few good quips in every episode, and watching Sara Lance fight is never not fun.
Fans of the 2001 live-action series — or the ’90s animated “Tick” — may be a bit flummoxed by this Amazon series, which is a bit dour and slow-moving, especially compared to the previous versions of the story of the big blue hero and his nervous sidekick, Arthur. But Peter Serafinowicz has a good time in the title role, and the sixth and final installment builds interest in the second half of the season, which is set to arrive in early 2018.
This show isn’t quite where it was in its sweet and energetic prime, but it’s still quite watchable, even if we are extremely jealous of Iris and Barry’s sweet (and apparently quite affordable) apartment.
After two seasons of Lazarus Pits and supernatural enemies, “Arrow” really found it’s groove again in Season 5 by returning to more grounded storylines. And thank goodness that the flashbacks are at least watchable this year (then again, it would not have seemed possible for them to be any worse than Season 4’s flashbacks).
The first Marvel series to hit Netflix, “Daredevil’s” two seasons shined by focusing on the street level crime the character is known for, and boasting some of the most impressive fight choreography on TV to date.
No comic-book TV show is perfect, including this one, but in its second season, this show got a lot more watchable and fun, and the believable and thoughtful depiction of the “Sanvers” romance is one of the best things in the entire superhero TV-verse.
Mike Colter charismatically anchored this entertaining and politically savvy take on “Luke Cage,” which had its share of patchy stretches, but the great cast and the blaxsploitation references made it worth sitting through the more uneven elements.
New York’s street-level heroes come together in this long-awaited project, which may not reach the heights of the first “Avengers” team up (what ever could, really?). But “The Defenders” offers a pretty solid season of battles and banter, and the more rote elements are offset by the number of jokes about the fact that Danny Rand, aka Iron Fist, can be pretty annoying. Aside from the fact that it’s good to see Jessica Jones and Luke Cage working together again, Sigourney Weaver is terrific as an elegant and deadly villain with plenty of resources and tricks up her haute couture sleeve.
We may not be 100 percent sure what’s going on some of the time in this trippy, X-Men adjacent tale, but the visuals, the music and the core cast are so good, and the story is so compellingly fractured, that we’re totally on board.
A spectacular performance by star Krysten Ritter, a memorable villain and a smart, necessary exploration of issues of consent and violation made this Marvel series unmissable, despite a few wobbles toward the end of the season.