SHE-HULK: ATTORNEY AT LAW Season One
Hulk smash fourth wall!
UK/US Disney+, streaming now Showrunner Jessica Gao
Cast Tatiana Maslany, Jameela Jamil,
Tim Roth, Mark Ruffalo
Marvel is taking the piss. Both out of itself and the kind of internet haters who were always going to loathe She-hulk anyway. What better way to do that than with Marvel’s premier fourth-wall breaker? Deadpool? Nah. Jennifer Walters was going meta when the Merc still had milk teeth.
She-hulk: Attorney At Law is brilliantly bat’s-arse. You want it to be a superhero show. It wants to be a legal comedy. It turns out to be neither and both in the most spectacularly bonkers way, holding the MCU up to a mirror, and then smashing the mirror.
Tatiana Maslany is in sparky form as ambitious lawyer Jennifer Walters, cousin to Bruce Banner and reluctant recipient of his Hulk abilities. She has little interest in becoming a superhero, but her employers spot a niche to be exploited, appointing her head of a new division set up to serve superhero claims.
It’s all very silly, and very meta, climaxing with an episode that makes Community look like a Mike Leigh film. Not all of the selfaware gags hit the bullseye, but that’s only because they come so thick and fast. The way it Teflon-coats itself to deflect
“male-bashing” criticism is ingenious – the bad guys turn out to be thinly disguised alt-right keyboard warriors. Even reducing Daredevil to the love interest role seems like a baiting exercise. There are loads of other cameos to enjoy, with Tim Roth’s radical take on Emil Blonsky (also known as Abomination) propelling him into the top ranks of MCU supporting characters.
For all that wit and invention, the show veers dangerously close to cartoonish territory at times, and some plasticky CG doesn’t help. It would benefit from a broader tonal spectrum and a few quieter moments so that the more serious points it has to make don’t get lost in all the crazy. Dave Golder
Episode eight features a billboard for Rogers: The Musical, the theatrical extravaganza featured in Hawkeye.