I Watch TV: The Boys

  The Boys

Superheroes are bad actually.

The Boys starts when Robin, Hughie’s girlfriend, is killed by A-Train, the fastest man in the world. He runs right through her while either high on compound-V, or racing to get some. A-Train is part of The Seven, the Vought Corporations top super-team and a mirror universe version of one or other Justice League*. They’re led by Homelander, who has Superman’s powers and Captain America’s dress sense, is hideously broken by his upbringing in a laboratory, and is also a monster.

Billy Butcher, a foul-mouthed Londoner compellingly played by Karl Urban, uses Hughie in an attempt to bring down Vought, superheroes in general and Homelander in particular, (he raped Butcher’s wife before she vanished). As events start to spiral out of control he re-forms his ex-CIA rogue anti-supe taskforce.

Everyone has a plan, everyone has an agenda. Everyone has flaws. Vought wants to get their supes into military operations which means covering up any super-cock-ups. Homelander wants to be loved, and will kill anyone in order to get it. Billy Butcher wants his revenge and is frighteningly aware about how out-matched he is and what he will have to do to even inconvenience supes. And Starlight, newest member of the Seven, actually wants to be a hero and may actually succeed.

This is a vicious satire of superhero stories, a cold look at what opposing overwhelming power is like (it’s terrorism), an occasionally heart-warming and -breaking story, and completely in love with gross gory deaths. Several compelling characters, all broken, with Homelander desperately empty and wronged by his creators and completely unsympathetic in his sociopathic narcissism.

Watch This: For a brutal gritty superhero pastiche
Don’t Watch This: You prefer your superheroics to be less murky

* Five of them are more or less direct analogues of top-tier DC heroes.