Do you wanna be in my gang?

It's called the "we didn't watch Heroes on any other channel, but we are going to watch it on BBC2 and pretend that it's new" gang. It's very exclusive.



Last night the first two episodes were given their first "terrestrial airing", a term that seems to be becoming increasingly meaningless in this age of near-ubiquitous satellite, cable and computer downloads.

Because I'd missed the start of the series on satellite, and I'm still taking the tenuous moral high-ground against pirated downloads, I decided to cover my ears to the office Heroes gossip and wait for the series to appear on BBC2.

I was also relishing it as an opportunity to bring back an "event program" into the EnVérité household. The only program that Jane and I made a point of sitting down and watching "properly" was Doctor Who, and now that's ended it's current run, the TV has gone back to being the noisy background wallpaper while other innumerable distractions are being taken care of.

It seems strange to be nostalgic about the golden age when the TV was the focal-point for household social interaction. After all, older generations are equally nostalgic about the days before watching the goggle-box was the default home leisure activity. These days computers and digital entertainment are gradually taking over broadcast telly's role as the leisure-time staple, but despite all its multi-player and social network potential, the digital world is often remarkably single-player and antisocial.

Just sitting and watching broadcast TV, rather than partaking in an interactive and personalised experience, is almost seen as a failing these days. As if you've settled for being passively "spoon fed" entertainment. But taking out the individuality and interactivity from entertainment often frees up other forms of interactivity. Talking about it to the person sitting next to you, for example, or the people in your office the next morning.

It turned out this morning that two other people in my office had watched Heroes for the first time last night, and it was great to discuss it's potential, and try to guess the future plot-twists. A few other guys in the office had watched it variously on copied DVDs, UK satellite (both live and recorded), and downloaded from the net. Their conversations in previous weeks were limited to ones that started with "have you seen that bit yet where..."

So that's 3 people in my gang already.

As for Heroes itself? Here's my review from the universe where the first series hasn't already finished yet.

It looks like it's got great potential, it does feel a lot like "Lost", with it's numerous plot threads, coincidental links between the characters, and intriguing loose ends. I'm hoping it doesn't go down the Lost route of just adding more and more loose ends until the whole thing resembles a frothy dessert of plot holes, with no real chance of them ever all being filled in.

It will also be interesting to see how they prevent it evolving into an X-Men-alike, or similar. I'm guessing that in the first series it will be fairly easy to maintain the premise of it being ordinary people with fairlt ordinary lives (who just happen to have extraordinary powers), but what about when they've become more of a cohesive group and their powers are more well known?

If you're already half-way through downloading series two, please don't answer that question!