The Umbrella Academy Review: 7 Ups & 2 Downs

4. The Character Dynamics

As with all superhero ensembles, the biggest joy comes in the way the characters entwine and interact. And what The Umbrella Academy has to its increased advantage over other multi-character set-ups is that the characters all feel like oddly fitting jigsaw pieces. They're like the X-Men, if every single one of them had some sort of maladjustment. How does that not sound better?

In things like the Avengers, there's a lot of fun to be had when characters you wouldn't expect to be together team-up, like Rocket and Thor in Infinity War or basically any situation where an oddball and a more straight-laced character have to work together. That's basically the entire premise of The Umbrella Academy and when it's at its most enjoyable.

There's definitely something of The Haunting Of Hill House in the way the characters play off each other - and the looming disaster threatening to bubble over (in this case in the future rather than the past) and that should play well with Netflix audiences. It's almost a shame they didn't play up to it more.

The fact that there's a monkey butler who is the most normal of the entire lot says everything you need to know about the characters and seeing his Alfred-like exasperation from the first episode is enormously rewarding. His interactions with the superhero kids, in particular, are great fun.