There were probably some people who thought it was a gamble too far when Marvel announced their deal with Netflix to produce four TV series’ (and a miniseries) for the streaming service. Today sees the launch of the first of those series, focusing on Matt Murdock, a.k.a the superhero Daredevil. And if the first episode is anything to go by, Marvel’s boldness may have paid off.
After a brief stop off in Daredevil’s past to establish why he’s blind (a car accident and some kind of toxic goo), we’re introduced to the character in the present. Matt Murdock is suitably enigmatic as he as asks forgiveness for what he’s ‘about to do’. It’s clear he has some secrets, and we find out one of them pretty quickly as he martial arts his way through a bunch of human traffickers in the dead of night.
The show does a fairly good job of introducing us to the rest of the regular cast: Matt’s best friend and law partner Foggy Nelson displays less moral virtue but adds a nice dash of humour to proceedings. Karen Page, as the lawyer pair’s first client, is well played by Deborah Ann Woll as she deals with all the people seemingly out to get her. Given she’s a long running Daredevil character, there will probably a lot more from her in the rest of the series, but in episode one she’s in a spot of bother.
Because it turns out Karen was at the scene of a murder, covered in the blood of the victim and with no memory of what happened. It looks like an open and shut case: no other suspects and seemingly enough evidence to charge her for murder. So Murdock and Nelson are on the case to make a name for themselves and pull a miracle out of the bag. The chemistry between these three characters is so far very good, which bodes well.
Without giving too much more away, we’re also introduced to some bad guys this episode: gangsters who seem to be using the devastation left by the attempted alien invasion in New York to their advantage (yes, that’s the same alien invasion from The Avengers if you hadn’t worked that out by now – it’s basically Marvel’s M.O). The most interesting villain so far is a sinister bespectacled man called Wesley, who we meet for the first time as he very casually threatens to have a man’s daughter killed. Suitably evil.
A montage near the end of the episode does a good job of showing just how powerful and ominous the bad guys are, with connections across New York so deep it seems they can get anywhere and do anything.
I won’t say anything more about the story, apart from that there’s at least one more cool fight scene and that the episode does a good job of introducing us to who’s who.
Matt Murdock himself, played by the British Charlie Cox, seems to have touches of Bruce Wayne, Tony Stark and Arrow’s Oliver Queen about him. If you’re a die hard comic book fan, saying this is probably a kind of blasphemy, and I don’t know how similar he is to comic book Daredevil. But while the show is very much a Marvel thing, it does feel like what The Dark Knight might look like if Marvel had made it. And that’s a good thing.
One final point to touch on. It might sound like a nerdy thing to have noticed, but the lighting and direction is beautiful in parts of the first episode. Like Batman, Daredevil looks likely to operate largely at night, so being able to see what is going on could have been a big issue. Luckily though, there’s never a moment where you have to squint to see the action. Matt Murdock’s apartment in particular looks so cool you will want to live there.
If the first episode is anything to go by this is probably another Marvel Studios hit. All thirteen episodes are available on Netflix already, so what else were you really going to do this weekend?
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