Live-action superhero TV seris are a funny breed. Some of these shows will experience an almost unprecedented level of success. For example, Smallville broke the record for the longest-running American science fiction series before it concluded, while shows like The Incredible Hulk and the 1960's Batman also enjoyed major success. But just as often, superhero shows will crash and burn on the airwaves. Birds of Prey, Green Hornet, The Flash, and The Cape were canceled after only one season. Many, like Mercy Reef, Generation X, and the recent Adrianne Palicki-starring Wonder Woman, never even make it past the pilot stage. And even when a series finds success, its popularity can evaporate as quickly as it appeared, as in the case of Heroes or the aforementioned Batman.
We're seeing these trends at work again in the current TV season. Arrow has quickly become a huge hit for The CW, ably filling the void left by Smallville. On the other side of the spectrum, consistently positive reviews for Alphas didn't prevent SyFy from cancelling that series after only two seasons.
So what determines whether a superhero show succeeds or fails? Clearly it's not simply a matter of quality, or Alphas would have lasted much longer. We've decided to take a look at the long history of superheroes on live-action TV and examine why some of these shows find an audience and some fade into obscurity. We're focusing only on live-action shows, not animation, because those two types tend to focus on different demographics and have different goals in mind.
If you look at a list of the most successful and longest-lasting superhero shows in history, one name is going to keep cropping up - Superman. That character has enjoyed a better track record than any character on the small screen. First there was the 1950's Superman starring George Reeves. Then there was Superboy in the late '80s and early '90s, which coasted on the popularity of the Christopher Reeve movies despite the dud that was Superman IV: Quest for peace. Superboy was followed up by the even more successful Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman in the mid-'90s. And then there was Smallville.
At some point it becomes obvious that viewers just really like Superman. He's an international icon - as recognizable as Mickey Mouse, if not even more so. His is a story that nearly everyone knows and can appreciate. So networks aren't asking much of a leap of faith from viewers when they present them with a new series chronicling the adventures of Superman. And to a lesser extent, this can help explain the easy popularity of Batman, Incredible Hulk, and so forth.
This is a huge hurdle facing the numerous shows that work with original characters rather than ones pulled from comic publishers like Marvel or DC. Alphas has often been compared to the X-Men franchise in how it presents a small team of genetically abnormal heroes who are guided by an older mentor and fight to prevent others of their kind from endangering the world. The problem is that many casual viewers would probably just rather watch an actual X-Men TV series. Audiences have a limited attention span. They also have a limited amount amount of room in their brains for remembering one superhero from another. Between the various Marvel and DC heroes that have debuted in theaters already or will be jumping to Hollywood in the next few years, audiences simply may not be interested in encountering new characters, especially ones that are too familiar to ones they already know.
Even some series that do adapt preexisting superhero comics can face problems in this regard. The Generation X TV movie failed to attract enough of a viewership for Fox to expand it into a series. And while the look and execution of the movie was certainly suspect, the fact that Fox was pitching an X-Men-themed show where the most recognizable characters were Jubilee and Emma Frost can't have helped either. Similarly, Birds of Prey should have had all the ingredients for a successful superhero formula. But by delivering a Gotham-based show where Catwoman was dead and Batman was in hiding, casual Bat-fans were being set up for disappointment right off the bat.
We're not arguing that it's a good thing that causal audiences are so hesitant to embrace new things. But that's how the TV industry works. It's why we have so many reality shows about pseudo-celebrities and weird cultural minorities. And it's not as if superhero comics themselves are much better in this regard. Marvel scarcely publishes anything these days that isn't connected to the X-Men or Avengers franchises. As TV networks continue to pursue new superhero-based shows, it stands to reason that the Smallvilles and Arrows of the world are going to stand a much better chance at success than shows based on original characters like Alphas.
Superhero comics are known for their long, operatic sagas of good battling evil. It's a serialized medium, and these stories and character conflicts never really end. Understandably, this is an element many writers have tried to adapt to television, regardless of whether they're working with preexisting properties or not. And this can be a very good thing. Superhero shows have the chance to offer a change of pace from sitcoms where the characters and situations never change.
But some of these shows have made the mistake of getting too wrapped up in their own mythology and forgetting to focus on the characters first. This was a problem Heroes increasingly faced after its first season, and a major reason for why fans soured on the show. The plot in Heroes became too convoluted and too dependent on bizarre plot twists. The last thing writers should want is to have a series that becomes impenetrable to new viewers after so many episodes. At that point, your potential viewership can only shrink.
Ideally, a superhero series should be simple enough in its core concept that new viewers can tune in and understand the basics regardless of how far along the plot is. Smallville did this well. The series was guilty of plenty of weird plot twists and convoluted meanderings of its own, but at its core, the show was always a fundamentally simple tale about a young Clark Kent growing up and slowly becoming Superman. Similarly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was always anchored by the underlying tale of a group of friends growing up in Sunnydale, even as they faced vampires, werewolves, and various other bizarre supernatural forces.
An ongoing mythology is important for superhero shows. As popular as they were their day, shows like Batman and Incredible Hulk suffer a bit in hindsight because they were so static. Batman and Robin would always clash with one of their recurring villains, would be in mortal peril as each episode ended on a cliffhanger, and then would escape the jaws of death to save Gotham again. David Banner would always hit the road again, never closer to quelling the monster within or clearing his name. Ideally, these shows need to strike a balance. They need t offer riveting plotlines that build on stories that have come before, but they need to be clean and accessible enough that their viewership doesn't automatically peak in Season 1.
In any medium, you have superhero stories that focus on only one hero, and you have ensemble adventures where many heroes join forces to find a common foe. TV has been no exception. But another trend we've noticed is that the more popular superhero TV series tend to be the one that focus on either individual heroes or smaller casts. Obviously, there are the many incarnations of Superman on TV. Each show includes Superman and his regular supporting cast (Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, etc.), but there's never any question as to who the star of the show is (or stars, in the case of Lois & Clark). The same goes for Batman, Incredible Hulk, Bionic Man, and various other tales of super-powered do-gooders. Even in an ensemble cast, viewers tend to gravitate towards one or a handful of lead characters.
Here again, Heroes made the mistake of getting too big and too ambitious for its own good. Inspired by the success of Lost, Heroes introduced a wide cast of characters, none of whom could really claim to be the star of the show. Often, these characters were only tangentially connected to one another. Rather than being trapped on a confined island together, they were merely a group of people scattered across the globe who happened to manifest superhuman abilities at the same time. This led to a more disjointed focus and prevented viewers from finding a focal point to latch onto.
Is this the same problem Alphas faced? Possibly. The series certainly had a much smaller cast than Heroes, and one more closely interconnected. But even the idea of a team of six or seven main players might have been too much for some potential viewers who were conditioned to expect solo heroes like Superman or Hulk or Dynamic Duos like Batman and Robin. Buffy the Vampire Slayer featured a fairly large ensemble cast, but it always centered around Buffy and her two closest allies - Xander and Willow. Perhaps three core leads is the maximum any superhero show should focus on. That doesn't explain the failure of Birds of Prey, but that show had plenty of other problems working against it.
One of the big hurdles superhero shows face these days is the high bar set by Hollywood. Each new Dark Knight sequel and Marvel Studios movie continues to raise the standard for special effects and costumes design. But with budgets hitting well into the hundreds of millions for these movies, this is a standard TV networks simply can't keep up with. When even George Lucas claims that a movie-quality, live-action Star Wars TV series is unfeasible right now, what hope do shows based on Marvel and DC superheroes have?
One of the big challenges facing superhero-themed shows now is offering a reasonably movie-quality look and feel while still operating under the limitations of television and the serialized format. With any luck, Marvel's S.H.I.E.L.D. TV series will set the bar in this regard. Conceptually, the series seems to offer a great compromise. It's set in the same universe as the Marvel Studios movies, but rather than focus on hugely expensive actors like Robert Downey Jr. or effect-heavy characters like Hulk, the series is devoted to the more ordinary agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as they police the globe in between the occasional Avengers team-up. Fans get a show that "matters" because it's part of a larger shared universe, but the producers and writers only need to reflect that larger universe as much as the story and budget dictate. And the fact that the show is free to toss in a cameo by Nick Fury or Captain America during sweeps week practically guarantees ratings success.
This is a model WB may want to pay attention to as they continue to develop their own live-action projects. To date, these series have all existed within their own little universe. The DCU in Arrow is not the same as the one in Smallville. Man of Steel and the Justice League movie are the first building blocks in WB's own shared movie universe. Why not extend that to TV just as Marvel is doing?
Movies will always have the upper hand when it comes to special effects and budgets. The trick for these various TV projects is to better learn how to work with more limited resources. Costume design alone can greatly impact a viewer's first impression of a series. We doubt many DC fans were won over by the cheap, trashy look of the costumes Birds of Prey. Smallville set the standard by shifting from spandex costumes to a more down-to-earth series of costumes. Clark Kent tended to wear various combinations of red and blue street clothes rather than his trademark Superman suit. And very often, Smallville suffered when it attempted to introduce more traditionally clad superheroes. The Justice Society characters in particular looked more like comic convention cosplayers than superheroes. Arrow has taken the real-world approach even further, with only a handful of characters wearing anything even remotely resembling a superhero costume. Similarly, The Incredible Hulk offered a much more low-key approach to the franchise, ditching most of the more flamboyant villains and reducing Banner to a man on the run. Like Smallville, that series suffered a bit when the TV movie spinoffs attempted to bring in other Marvel heroes like Daredevil and Thor.
The message for TV producers is this - know your limits, and know how to make the best use of your source material within those limitations.
This is a problem endemic to a lot of TV shows, not just superhero-based shows. Too many TV series take too long to find their footing and reach a comfortable storytelling groove. How many American TV series become significantly stronger after 6-12 episodes? Even well-loved gems like Community are noticeably smoother a few months into their first season. This was another problem that Alphas faced. Early reviews for the show were mixed, with many complaining about its derivative feel. But after a month or two, the series picked up creative steam and the review scores rose accordingly. Heroes suffered from pretty much the opposite problem. It opened strongly and drew in viewers with a tightly plotted first season. But the writing quality took a nosedive in Season 2 (with no thanks to the 2008 WGA strike), and the series never recovered from that loss of momentum and viewership.
The problem here is that many shows don't have the luxury of improving and evolving over time. Network executives are all-too eager to cancel under-performing shows at the first sign of trouble and replace them with the next big thing. Alphas was fortunate to air on a less traditional network like SyFy. We doubt it would have survived as long as it did on a channel like NBC or Fox.
Plenty of TV fanatics will draw comparisons between American and British TV in these cases. British shows often air in batches of six to twelve episodes, and sometimes even less. These shorter "series" of episodes are usually more self-contained, and often a show will ever continue beyond those few episodes. The exact opposite of Smallville, in other words. But the benefit to this approach is that writers and producers are forced to hit the ground running. They can't deliver a TV show that starts weak but improves over time, because there isn't enough time for the transition to occur.
For projects like Alphas that don't have the mainstream hype and studio support of a show like Arrow, the British model has a lot to offer. The next Alphas, wherever and whenever it debuts, will need to hit its stride immediately. It needs to be creative enough to capture the attention of viewers and consistent enough to maintain their interest over the long term. And just in case the worst happens and the show faces cancellation at the end of the season anyway, a more self-contained approach to the storytelling will ensure that fans aren't left with a cliffhanger that will forever remain unresolved.
Jesse is a writer for various IGN channels. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.
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