THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY Season Two
Another day, another Dallas
UK/US Netflix, streaming now
Showrunner Steve Blackman
Cast Ellen Page, Tom Hopper, Robert
Sheehan, Emmy Raver-Lampman
The kooky emo teen of the current batch of off-the-wall superhero shows, Netflix’s adaptation of Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá’s flamboyantly weird comic enters its second season with a refreshing dose of retro style. Very loosely borrowing a couple of concepts from the second run of the original comic, the story picks up from season one’s world-ending cliffhanger by hurling all seven adoptive Hargreeve siblings through time to Dallas, Texas in the early ’60s, where they’re soon involved in the run-up to the Kennedy assassination and another potential apocalypse.
Not as mind-bending as Legion or as ballistically weird as Doom Patrol, The Umbrella Academy’s biggest strength is the engaging cast and the dysfunctional family dynamic at the heart of the story. This new season progresses the characters in interesting ways (especially Ellen Page’s Vanya, who finally gets to be an active part of the team), and also eases down the angsty gloom, instead delivering even more of the likeable charm that made for the first season’s strongest moments.
Unfortunately, many of the debut season’s flaws are also carried over: there’s still too little story to fill 10 episodes, the soundtrack didn’t need quite so many on-the-nose pop classics, and bringing back campy Tim Burton-esque adversary The Handler (Kate Walsh) was a huge mistake. It’s to the show’s credit that it still manages to be colourful and engaging, but one would hope for a pacier, weirder and more focussed Umbrella Academy if season three happens. Saxon Bullock
You Look Like Death, a new Umbrella Academy spin-off comic series co-written by Gerard Way, is due in September.