Easily the year’s best superhero TV show
Marvel’s Jessica Jones (out of 4) Starring Krysten Ritter, David Tennant, Carrie-Anne Moss, Mike Colter. On Netflix Nov. 20
It would be easy to brand Marvel’s Jessica Jones as Mike Hammer for millennial women.
There is the Mickey Spillane tough-girl talk, the noirish, hard-boiled street scenes, the booze and casual sex.
But Netflix’s second entry into the crowded superhero market has some added dimensions, including a heroine who seems bleakly vulnerable in a show that is unafraid to show the jagged edges of coping with unique powers that can also be a curse.
Jessica Jones joins Supergirl, which was the first major network female comic book superhero series since Wonder Womanfour decades ago when it debuted last month. And the timbre of the shows couldn’t be more different. Supergirl is sunny. Jessica Jones is like being locked up in a psychotic ward. They are both good at what they do. But Jessica Jones is for the adults.
All the more impressive is that this is the most unsuperhero-like show on TV. Based on the Marvel comic book Alias, Jessica Jones is not the most obvious choice for a comic book screen treatment. Yet it is easily the best such show to debut this year.
The 13-episode series, which drops on Netflix Friday, makes for riveting bingewatching. (Reviewers were given the first seven episodes.)
It is more psychodrama than it is about folks who can fly or smash things. The action scenes are far less than Supergirl fans would expect, or even fans of Netflix’s own Daredevil. Suspense and drama take the place of fists and when there is action, it is violent and jarring, just like in real life.
Krysten Ritter ( Breaking Bad) portrays private eye Jones as a case study in posttraumatic hero syndrome, a heroine who is her own worst enemy.
Burnt out and retired from the superhero business, she has turned to spying on cheating spouses for a living. Or, as she says from the outset, “A big part of the job is looking for the worst in people. It turns out I excel at that.”
David Tennant ( Broadchurch, Doctor Who) manages to play one of the best and creepiest villains on television, despite the fact we see precious little of him in the early episodes. Lurking in the shadows, Kilgrave’s mind control powers are reminiscent of the X-Men’s Professor X — if Professor X were a mind-raping psychopath.
At one point we learn that Ritter was under the control of Kilgrave. The topics are disturbing, including rape and abuse, but are handled sensitively, which give the show poignancy.
And for all her faults, the darkness of the show is tempered by the immense good that still lurks in the heart of a broken Jessica Jones despite the overwhelming trauma she has experienced.
Fans of Daredevil will recognize the grimy Hell’s Kitchen universe, conjuring up a New York far less gentrified than it is now. This is the second in four planned series and one miniseries, with Luke Cage and Iron Fist to come, eventually culminating in The Defenders.
There are also some fine casting choices in Jessica Jones, including Mike Colter ( The Good Wife) as the impermeable Luke Cage.
Cage has a substantial role as Jessica’s love interest and Colter’s perfor- mance whets the appetite for the third part of the franchise.
Carrie-Anne Moss ( The Matrix) plays the type-A lawyer who hires Jones for special assignments.
Unlike a typical superhero show, there are precious few CGI special effects. Both Jones and Cage have super strength and Jones can leap tall buildings in almost a single bound, but the action scenes do not overwhelm.
The closest relative on broadcast TV to the bleak, moody and cinematic feel of Jessica Jones would be Fox’s Gotham, which remains the standard bearer for superhero series.
While DC characters such as The Flash and Supergirl are firmly main street, Marvel’s universe via Netflix remains rooted in side streets and back alleys.
It features heroes who are not quite heroes and allows for a rich dramatic experience.
With Jessica Jones, creator Melissa Rosenberg ( Twilight, Dexter) has brought us perhaps the most fully formed TV character to be imagined from a comic book yet.