There was a lot of hype for the shows that Netflix and Marvel were going to produce: Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and the The Defenders. Daredevil was the one tasked with leading the way and setting the tone, and safe to say that - despite the Ben Affleck film - expectations were pretty high. But perhaps no one expected, well, this. We're used to seeing the brightly-coloured, one-liner filled Marvel Cinematic Universe, with its perfect heroes and CGI fight scenes. If you put this show in front of someone who didn't know it was Marvel, they'd be hard-pressed to tell you it belonged to the MCU, save for a few references here and there. Daredevil is a dark and gritty ground-level story, focusing on the Hell's Kitchen area in the aftermath of The Avengers. They may have saved the world, but they didn't tidy up after themselves. Instead, it's left to Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), a blind lawyer, to pick up the pieces. What follows is a collision course between Murdock and Wilson Fisk, another man determined to do his best for Hell's Kitchen, although this methods are, er, questionable. Rather than making Fisk an outright bad guy, though, they actually make you sympathise with him even when he's smashing a car door into someone's head. He's a brutal monster, but also a tragic figure, and one of the most compelling screen villains Marvel has produced. The story felt really fresh and different, the action scenes were utterly brutal (see: the one-take corridor fight in the second episode), and the characters were really given time to grow so that you understood their motivations and their actions had actual impact. It's one of the best things Marvel has ever made for the screen, yet not even their best of 2015...
NCTJ-qualified journalist. Most definitely not a racing driver. Drink too much tea; eat too much peanut butter; watch too much TV. Sadly only the latter paying off so far.
A mix of wise-old man in a young man's body with a child-like wonder about him and a great otherworldly sensibility.
