In a sentenceSouth London’s first superheroes, and every one of them has rent due
South London, now. Michael Lasaki-Brown (Tosin Cole) drives a delivery van, loves his girlfriend Dionne Ofori (Adelayo Adedayo) and has just bought a ring. Then he finds he can stop time, and what he learns while it is stopped sends him looking for four strangers. Sabrina Clarke (Nadine Mills) is a nurse working double shifts to keep her sister afloat. Andre Simpson (Eric Kofi Abrefa) is out of prison and cannot get a job or see his son. Rodney Cullen (Calvin Demba) sells weed from a bicycle. Tazer (Josh Tedeku) runs a gang of boys in balaclavas. None of them knows the others exist, and men in hoods are already watching.
Plays from YouTube when you press play; nothing loads from them until then.
Rapman’s superhero series is at its best when nobody is using a superpower: five people in South London with jobs, debts and families, played by a cast worth the six hours. The conspiracy chasing them is the dullest thing in it.
Supacell takes the oldest superhero idea, ordinary people wake up with powers, and puts it on estates in South London where the powers are the least of anyone’s worries. Michael Lasaki-Brown (Tosin Cole) can stop time, and what he saw while it was stopped is keeping him awake. Sabrina Clarke (Nadine Mills) can move things with her mind and still has a shift to finish. Andre Simpson (Eric Kofi Abrefa) can lift a cash machine and still cannot get a job interview. The series, created by Rapman and directed by him with Sebastian Thiel, runs six episodes and is good for most of them. Its people are far better than its plot.
The heart of it is Michael and Dionne Ofori (Adelayo Adedayo), and this is where we were moved more than we expected. Cole plays Michael as a decent, slightly boring man who has never had to be anything else, and the series makes him carry a secret he cannot explain without sounding mad. Adedayo gives Dionne a quick intelligence that makes his evasions hopeless; she knows something is wrong by the second scene. Their kitchen conversations, about money, about his mother, about whether he is lying, are written and played as if the superpowers did not exist. When he flinches at a question he cannot answer, we flinched with him.
The other strands are nearly as strong. Mills plays Sabrina as someone who has been responsible for other people so long that a power is just another job. Abrefa’s Andre is the one we would follow into a spin-off: a big man made small by a criminal record, trying to be a father to a boy who has stopped expecting him. Calvin Demba makes Rodney, the dealer who can suddenly outrun a car, properly funny, and Josh Tedeku, as the gang leader Tazer, has the hardest part and does not soften it.
Rapman and Thiel shoot the area as a place people live rather than a backdrop. Chicken shops, stairwells, a barber’s, a nurses’ station, buses at night; the camera stays at head height and lets the streets fill the frame. The powers are shown plainly, with little noise. Sabrina stops a glass mid-air, Michael walks through a frozen room, and the series trusts that this is enough. When the action does arrive, it is cut so you can see who is where, which is rarer than it should be. The soundtrack leans on British rap, and Ghetts turns up in front of the camera too, as a gangster called Krazy.
The trouble is the thing that is supposed to hold it together. Somewhere above the estates there is an organisation, there are men in hoods with torches, there is a laboratory, and there is a reason for all of it that the series keeps back for far too long. We were bored, in the fourth episode, watching people in a white corridor exchange meaningful looks about files, and then we were irritated, because the scene before it, Andre at a job centre, had been as good as television gets. The hooded men are not frightening and they are not interesting. They are there to make the plot move, and it moves slowly even so.
The pace is a real flaw. Six episodes is not long, and the five do not stand in the same room until most of them are gone. The series wants each life established before the lives collide, which is the right instinct, but it leaves the back half rushed and the front half waiting.
What stayed with us was Tazer’s strand, and it horrified us, as it is meant to. The gang scenes are boys on bikes stabbing other boys over postcodes, filmed without music and without glamour, and the series does not pretend a superpower makes any of it less stupid or less sad. Rapman covered this ground in Blue Story (2019) and knows it well.
Set beside Misfits, the last British attempt at this, Supacell is less funny and much more serious about where its characters come from. It is also, in its people, more convincing. Watch it over two nights, forgive the hoods, and stay for the kitchens.
The reviews are unanimously favourable and agree on why. Most critics praise the South London setting first: the estates and front rooms are described as lived-in rather than dressed, and the dialogue as authentic. The cast is widely admired, and Variety in particular singles out the tenderness of Michael and Dionne’s relationship. The consensus is that the series works because it grounds its superpowers in ordinary pressures, and that this gives it a distinctiveness the genre has been short of.
The reservations are mild and consistent. The Guardian finds the central threat weak and the action infrequent; Empire has similar trouble with a framing subplot. Several reviews say the series takes time to get going and that its many storylines can drag. The Hollywood Reporter is the most measured, finding the superhero plotting familiar while admiring the setting, and Den of Geek is irritated by how long the plot keeps its secrets. The spread is narrow, from good to very good, with nobody against it.
Godfrey finds the series propulsive, compulsive viewing, despite a weaker framing subplot. He praises its vivid South London setting and the authenticity of its characters and dialogue.
Read the full review →Latif finds the series ingenious, distinctive and hugely enjoyable, despite a weak central threat and somewhat infrequent action. She praises its nuanced characters and the compelling way their everyday struggles shape their responses to superpowers.
Read the full review →Jessop finds the series engaging and successful, though it takes time to get going. She praises its cast and well-executed action sequences, while noting that the many separate storylines can drag.
Read the full review →Tinubu finds the series a bold, distinctive contribution to the superhero genre, despite some familiar themes and implausible story beats. She especially praises its thoughtful exploration of Black experiences and the tenderness of Michael and Dionne’s relationship.
Read the full review →The available blurb presents the series as a gripping, addictive drama. It singles out its South London superhero premise, but the full review is inaccessible.
Read the full review →Fienberg finds the series familiar in its superhero storytelling but sees ample potential in its distinctive South London setting and characters. He especially praises the lived-in neighborhoods, the cast, and the way the series explores Black British experiences.
Read the full review →
Misfits · not reviewed yetCommunity service, a storm, superpowers nobody asked for; funnier and sillier than this.
Attack the BlockA South London estate against aliens, with the same refusal to look down on anyone.
Top BoyThe same streets without the powers, and some of the same actors’ instincts.
Watchmen · not reviewed yetSuperheroes as a way of talking about Black history, done with more money and ambition.
Blue Story · not reviewed yetRapman’s film about a postcode war, which explains where Tazer’s episodes come from.
Free account
Two lists that know where things are streaming, collections you can share, your own score beside ours, and Discover that remembers what you have seen.
