THE BOYS Season One

Injustice League of America

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2019 | 18 | Blu-ray/DVD

Showrunner Eric Kripke

Cast Erin Moriarty, Karl Urban,

Jack Quaid, Antony Starr

2019 was the year of the bizarro superteam show, with Legends Of Tomorrow, The Umbrella Academy, Doom Patrol, Watchmen and The Boys all vying for airspace. Amazingly, they all brought something different to the table, from Watchmen’s Rubik’s Cube-plotting to Doom Patrol’s exuberant meta-referencing.

Put alongside them, The Boys seems almost conventional, but don’t let its less gimmicky approach to storytelling fool you. The show inverts a whole bunch of superhero tropes to create a savage satire not only of the cape ’n’ cowl genre but of media manipulation, celebrity culture and the cult of personality.

Based on Garth Ennis’s controversial comic, it centres on a self-appointed group of superhero watchdogs, aiming to hold those with powers to account for the “collateral damage” they cause. In this world, the members of the world’s foremost superteam, The Seven, are largely self-serving, loathsome gits, more concerned with their public image than truth, justice or whatever. And the BIG EVIL CORPORATION that bankrolls them will stop at nothing to ensure their superheroes maintain their public standing. As a cure, though, the Boys may be worse than the illness, as their leader, Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), is an unapologetic ends-justifies-themeans kind of guy.

Ultraviolent, sweary and full of kinky sex (gill-rape? No, really), The Boys is hardly subtle, and Urban’s cringeworthy Cockney accent must be self-parody, surely. But the debauchery is constantly inventive, there are WTF moments galore, and an impressive catalogue of abhorrent, but oddly compelling characters whom you feel slightly dirty for becoming so invested in.

Extras Sixteen deleted scenes and a blooper reel. Dave Golder

Jim Beaver, who plays Defense Secretary Robert A Singer, played a Bobby Singer in another Eric Kripke show, Supernatural.