My Hero – Season Two (2007/BBC Video)
Picture:
B- Sound: C+ Extras: D Episodes: B
My Hero – Season Two collects the further adventures
of "Theroman", the British Sitcom of the alien super-hero and his
experiences on Earth. The series is the
comedic adventures of George Sunday, aka "Theroman" from the planet,
Ultron. George, played with great
child-like charm by Ardal O'Hanlon, lives with his girlfriend Janet, a nurse
played by Emily Joyce, who helps him learns the strange ways of his new adopted
planet. In the first season, George met
Janet when he saved her from falling into The Grand Canyon while she was on
vacation. Thermoman instantly falls in
love with Janet, finds out where she lives and pursues her as George. Despite George's odd behavior (not being
familiar with Earth customs), Janet fall's in love too, and George soon reveals
his secret identity to her.
Janet's
parent's, Stanley and Ella, wish Janet would dump the strange George and date
her boss, Dr. Piers Crispin, an egocentric wannabe who has a daytime TV show
along with his General Practice. Crispin
has aspirations of being a big time TV star so he can dump his practice and
"stop being around all these sick people". Janet also works with the sadistic Mrs.
Raven, a miserable old biddy who gets great pleasure out of picking on Dr.
Crispin and his patients. She
continuously talks about her triplets or as she calls them "The Spawns of
Hell".
George
also owns and operates a health food store that doesn't do a lot of business. George's assistant, the burnt-out ex-hippie
Tyler, knows George's secret identity, but nobody believes him when he talks
about it because he always talks about his adventures in space and his previous
abductions. George has a cousin Arnie,
also from Ultron, who owns and operates a casino in Las Vegas. Arnie was once a superhero like George, but
had his powers stripped from him when it was found out that he was charging
people for his super-services.
My Hero is a delightful series that is a
lot of fun to watch. O'Hanlon plays George/Thermoman with a great innocence,
like he's a big child, as he learns of the weird (to him) Earth-like ways. This innocence plays well against his new
native-Earth friends, as it shows the eccentric quarks of each individual, sometimes
literally. Having weird quarks of his
own, George can only change into Thermoman in a bathroom. He senses coming disasters and emergences by
taking a big "whiff" of the air. It is very funny watching him talk to someone,
suddenly stop, turn his head, "SNIFF!" and he's off to save the day
somewhere half-way around the world.
The show
is a great "fish out of water" premise. Being a comedy, it is more about George
adapting to our ways than his super-hero adventures. In Season
Two's episodes, he learns about Christmas, parental acceptance, the value
of holding down a well paying job, jealousy and in the final two episodes of
the season, pregnancy and marriage.
The one
thing I found to be odd while watching this series is that all the aliens have
non-British accents. George speaks with
Irish accent. Arnie speaks with an American accent, like he's from Brooklyn. (In the first season, it was revealed that he
originally settled in New York and operated a cafe.) In the third episode, George's betrothed fiancée
comes to Earth to claim her husband-to-be. Even she has a Scottish accent. I don't know if this is done on purpose, but
it is a neat "shtick". This is
a great comedy for adults and children alike.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is shot in HD and is not bad despite
some color and detail limits, while The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo sound is very
basic and standard. The disc's only extra is of the main cast biographies,
which is not much at all for a new show.
- Marc Greisinger
