New Harlem Renaissance: Marvel's Luke Cage

Mike Colter as Luke Cage, in Marvel's Luke Cage on Netflix.

Five months have passed since the events of the first season of Jessica Jones, and the scene has now shifted uptown from Hell's Kitchen to Harlem, where Luke Cage (Mike Colter, The Good Wife) has been keeping to himself, working two minimum-wage jobs and living anonymously above a Chinese restaurant. He has revealed his abilities to 'Pop' Henry (Frankie Fraison), a paternal figure who runs a barbershop where Cage works, but otherwise is largely content to sweep hair and wash dishes. All that changes when a kid from the shop, also under Pop's wing, gets caught up in some dirty business with local drug dealer and club owner, Cornell "Cottonmouth" Stokes (Mahershala Ali, House of Cards). Cage stops laying in the cut and steps – hoodie, bulletproof skin and all – on to the streets. There is a lot that is great about Luke Cage, even more that is very good, and, unfortunately much that is ultimately disappointing.

Where Law Meets Reality: Daredevil

Charlie Cox and Rosario Dawson in Marvel's Daredevil on Netflix.

Matt: I can't see, not like everyone else, but I can feel. […] All of the fragments form a sort of…  impressionistic painting.
Claire: Okay, but what does that look like? Like, what do you... actually see?
Matt: A world on fire.

When Netflix launched Marvel's Daredevil last month, the series entered a crowded field. Superheroes are everywhere on television right now. Against the proliferating DC-televison universe (Gotham on Fox; Arrow and The Flash on The CW, with another Arrow spinoff, Legends of Tomorrow just announced today, and CBS's Supergirl currently in production), Marvel seems intent on conquering the small screen all on its own. Daredevil joins Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (which will air its second season finale this Tuesday) and Marvel's Agent Carter, whose brief run (also on ABC) will be followed by a second season next year. Moreover, Daredevil marks the first of four projected Netflix/Marvel team-ups, the next one being A.K.A. Jessica Jones (starring Krysten Ritter and David Tennant), currently in production and set to air sometime later in 2015. At some point in the future, Daredevil and Jessica Jones will team up with the stars of the as-yet-unproduced shows Iron Fist and Luke Cage for a multi-cast miniseries, The Defenders. On paper, all of this sounds overwhelmingly ambitious, and for this viewer it is, maybe dizzyingly so – but if the first step of that journey of a thousand miles is Daredevil, Marvel might just pull it off.

Marvel's Jessica Jones: AKA Saviour Complex

Krysten Ritters stars in Marvel's Jessica Jones, current streaming on Netflix.

Welcome back to Hell's Kitchen. Our last glimpse into this especially dark corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe was several months ago when Netflix launched Daredevil, the first of five projected Marvel television series. At the time, Daredevil was the most adult chapter of the narrative juggernaut that Marvel has been unfolding since the 2008 release of Iron Man. Daredevil told a surprisingly gritty and human story, a weighty and morally ambiguous entry that left behind the big screen world of alien invasions, laser-wielding raccoons, killer robots, and colourful, bantering superheroes. With the recent release of Jessica Jones, Netflix and Marvel return us to the grimy streets of New York City's Hell's Kitchen, but where Daredevil ends, Jessica Jones only begins – and the result is the darkest and most compelling story that Marvel has yet told.

A Universe All Its Own: FX's Legion

Dan Stevens and Rachel Keller in FX's Legion.

“Something new needs to happen soon.” – David Haller, in the first episode of FX's Legion.

I'm fairly certain no one has looked at the current line-up of television shows and thought, "What we really need are more superheroes." With multiple series airing on cable, network, and streaming channels, I'm not sure we've ever had as many competing superhero shows at the same time before. Ranging from the light, and sometimes emotionally stunted, stories of the CW's so-called Arrowverse (the best of which remains the consistently delightful Legends of Tomorrow), to the dark depths Netflix has mined for its growing stable of Marvel shows, to NBC's Powerless, an ensemble office comedy set in the bright palettes of DC's Silver Age, the shows themselves are as diverse in tone (and quality) as the vast sweep of contemporary television itself. In that vein, even the most dedicated comic book fan might not have noticed (or cared) that last Wednesday FX premiered another superhero series.

Created by novelist-turned-television-writer Noah Hawley (Fargo, The Unusuals), Legion tells the story of David Haller (Downton Abbey's Dan Stevens), a mutant who finally begins to accept the reality of his extraordinary psychic abilities after years in a psychiatric facility where he has been treated for his (perhaps) misdiagnosed schizophrenia. After escaping from the institution, he finds himself hunted by a secret government agency, which is intent on capturing him and harnessing his abilities to its own ends, until he falls in with a ragtag team of equally maladjusted mutants. So far, so familiar: on these terms, Legion would appear to be telling a run-of-the-mill superhero origin story – one character's struggles, internal and external, with his still untamed super-abilities – but this is also where the familiarity ends. Legion is indeed, as Haller himself wishes for aloud in the show's first hour, something new.

Marvel’s Runaways: Do You Know Where Your Children Are?

Lyrica Okano, Ariela Barer, Rhenzy Feliz, Virginia Gardner and Gregg Sulkin in Marvel's Runaways, on Hulu.

On November 21, Hulu premiered Marvel’s Runaways (or Runaways). The Hulu original series has been airing weekly ever since, and its ten-episode first season will be concluding this Tuesday night (January 9). It is an adaptation of the critically acclaimed 2003 Marvel comic series, and like any adaptation of beloved material, it was anticipated with a mix of excitement and cautious expectation. My own reaction to hearing of the series' going into production early last year was: “Wow, I can’t wait to see how they will screw this up.” Our recent history of comic-book adaptations, which reached fever pitch with the dominance of the Marvel Cinematic Universe on the large and small screens, and DC’s own parallel efforts (currently in the form of its growing – and consistently uneven – stable of CW’s television series), has done nothing to reassure audiences that such adaptations will be of a reliable quality. (The less said here of DC's big-screen productions the better.  Its television offerings began with Arrow in 2012 and the most successful, in my mind, has been Legends of Tomorrow, whose 3rd season continues next month.)

Like all of Marvel’s current television productions, Runaways takes place within the same continuity universe as the tent-pole movies that show up in theatres every few months, but, in the nine episodes that have aired so far, there have been no sign-posts at all of that universe – and this has been to Runaways’ benefit. As fascinating as it sometimes is to explore the small corner of the MCU the Netflix series have staked out, that ever-enlarging story has been more often a burden rather than a gift when it comes to storytelling, because the pressure of that continuity invariably goes only in one direction. (The flagship Marvel series, ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., has battled mightily under that weight for five seasons, and most recently has come up with some rather creative solutions: last year setting the latter half of its story in an entirely virtual universe and this year thrusting its heroes into a deep, alternate future.) But absent even the lip service often paid by Netflix Marvel shows to their noisy big-screen cousins, Runaways feels firmly set in a narrative universe all its own, providing the new series the space to find its own unique voice.

The Vocabulary of Bullets: The Punisher

Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle in The Punisher, on Netflix.

Country, I was a soldier to you.
I did what you asked me to.
It was wrong, and you knew.

Country, now I'm just a stranger to you.
A number, a name; it's true.
Throw me away when you're through.

– "I Wish It Was True" by The White Buffalo/Jake Smith

Now, that’s more like it. After two long years, we finally get a Marvel/Netflix series worthy of the promise demonstrated by the first season of Daredevil and the audacious Jessica Jones. (The last 18 months have given us an uneven sophomore season of Daredevil, the missteps at the end of the otherwise impressive Luke Cage, the terminally sluggish Iron Fist and the fun, action-packed, but ultimately forgettable Defenders team-up miniseries in August.) Frank Castle – a.k.a. The Punisher, played again by Jon Bernthal – was the best thing by far in Daredevil’s second season, and now he is back in The Punisher. If you (like me) lost faith in Netflix’s small urban corner of the MCU sometime during your viewing of Iron Fist (I abandoned the show in the middle of its 8th episode and have never looked back), this first season of The Punisher is likely to bring you back to the fold. Though bloodier by far than any other Netflix/Marvel outing, Punisher offers its most character-driven story since Jones, and its most relevant since Luke Cage.

Unexpected Destinations: Showcase's Travelers

The cast of Travelers, now airing on Showcase in Canada and available soon on Netflix worldwide.

This review contains spoilers for the first episode of Travelers.
 
Time travel seems to be the genre that keeps on giving this year, with Timeless and Frequency already premiering and Kevin Williamson's new series adaptation of Time After Time still waiting in the wings. And three weeks ago, Canada's Showcase specialty channel (which, well ahead of the current curve, already gave us four strong seasons of Continuum) returns to the time travel trough with Travelers, created by Stargate television franchise co-creator Brad Wright and starring Eric McCormack ( Will & Grace). Like Continuum, Travelers is Canadian through and through. Filmed in Vancouver (though, unlike Continuum, set in an unnamed American city), the main cast is exclusively Canadian – in addition to the Toronto-born McCormack, it includes Medicine Hat's MacKenzie Porter, Mississauga's Nesta Cooper, Flin Flon's mixed-material-artist-turned-actor Jared Abrahamson, Edmonton's Patrick Gilmore, Vancouver's Reilly Dolman, and notably former star of CBC's Da Vinci's Inquest Ian Tracey – with the behind-the-scenes talent drawing from the deep well of similarly Canuck writers and directors.

Travelers premiered on Showcase on October 17 and has aired three episodes so far. Once its 12-episode first season concludes, the show will launch internationally on Netflix, which co-produces the new series. In addition to its exclusive "Netflix originals" – like Stranger Things, House of Cards, Lady Dynamite, Sense8, and its growing catalogue of Marvel shows – Netflix has been venturing more deeply into international co-productions of late, a model whereby the series first airs locally and the streaming service holds all international distribution rights (the same model that gave us the French-produced A Very Secret Service this past summer). Travelers, like CBC's recently-announced Anne of Green Gables adaptation Anne, will air week by week north of the 49th parallel before gracing the small screens of Netflix subscribers worldwide, which means we Canadians have a kind of exclusive preview of the new series.

The Best of CAL 2017

Critics at Large Summer Meeting, August 4/17 (l.to r. Kevin Courrier, Danny McMurray, Steve Vineberg, Devin McKinney, Justin Cummings, Bob Douglas and Mark Clamen)

Back in January 2010, David Churchill, Shlomo Schwartzberg and I came up with the idea of Critics At Large. We envisioned a daily online arts journal that would provide for us the freedom to write – a freedom we were beginning to lose working in magazines and newspapers. Growing rapidly tired of plying our trade in a field where desperate careerism was taking the place of collegiality and editors were beginning to reward expedience, we wanted to remain more true to the pleasures of critical writing. We also wanted to discover what kind of reader we could cultivate and who they might turn out to be. Over the last eight years, many things changed in both our writing and in our audience. For one thing, Critics At Large became less a haven for frustrated writers and more an accomodating home for a diverse and hopeful group who saw the magazine as a possibility. We began attracting a motley crew from various backgrounds who helped change Critics at Large for the better. A number of men and women, young and old, experienced and not, came to shape our identity rather than take on the one we already had. Along that path, we also attracted veteran arts critics who wanted to continue to address the work that inspired them, but we also drew inexperienced writers trying to find the true value of having a voice to speak with. When I read individual pieces each day, I marvel at the sheer range of material and the keen passion each writer brings to their subject. As for our readers, not only have they been rapidly growing, but the diversity of opinion in the magazine has helped us reach out to a much wider audience.What became most important for me, as one of its co-founders, was watching Critics At Large grow beyond my own expectations into a continually morphing organism that embraces the freedom our writers bring to it. For those who believe that arts criticism isn't about having the right opinion, but instead is a means by which the writer and reader mutually discover their own personal relationship to the arts, I think we are succeeding in getting there. As a way to celebrate that goal, and, I suppose, to amply demonstrate it, here is a look back at some of my own favourite pieces from 2017. They aren't presented in any order of preference. Rather than commenting on the writer and their work, I've selected specific quotes that I think best reflects their value to me as critics. As I continue on as editor, writer, and reader, I can truly say that I'm proud to call them colleagues.

Kevin Courrier
Editor-in-Chief
Critics At Large

The Upside Down: Musings on a Year Watching Television

Pamela Adlon in FX's Better Things.

Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you’ve never been. Once you’ve visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit, you can never be entirely content with the world that you grew up in. And discontent is a good thing: people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different...

– Neil Gaiman, from The View from the Cheap Seats

2016 has been a long year, an awful year… even (to paraphrase Judith Viorst) a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year. As I type this, news of the sudden passing of Debbie Reynolds has emerged close on the heels of the woefully premature death of her daughter, Carrie Fisher – adding to the body count of a year that seemed to be almost gleefully stealing our brightest lights. But, eager as I am to finally see the back of this year, taking on the task of reflecting on the past twelve months of television has been genuinely heartening. It has been an eventful – too eventful – year in the real world, but for television it has also been a time of innovation, and further strengthened my belief that TV has never been as good, as smart, as brave, and as human as it is now. It may feel more like a decade ago, but it was only last January that Louis C.K. unceremoniously gifted us the first episode of his stripped-down and ground-breaking Horace and Pete, and only six months ago that Netflix premiered Stranger Things, the Duffer Brothers’ unabashed and brilliant homage to the best of the 80s, from Steven Spielberg to John Carpenter to George Lucas and Stephen King. And then last September, Netflix pulled the curtain back from its small corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and introduced us to Luke Cage – a series that, despite some plot weaknesses late in its first season, jumped with both feet into our difficult times and provided us with some of the year’s most compelling hours of television. In a year when reality threatened to overtake our imagination, both in menace and absurdity, television kept pace – providing escape, insight, and regular and much-needed reminders that the human race has more up its sleeve than the ever-darkening headlines suggest. A small caveat: what follows is not a complete ranked list of what television has offered these past 12 months, but rather a few reflections on where television has taken me in 2016.