Daredevil mopping up the mean streets

I’m only two episodes in, but I’m pretty much hooked on Daredevil. Marvel’s dominion over the superhero universe continues, now following in the footsteps of Frank Underwood on Netflix with an initial season of 13 episodes. Charlie Cox (Boardwalk Empire) plays Matt Murdock – blinded in his youth, his other senses become hyper-attuned to compensate, giving him the power to sense approaching threats or tell when someone’s lying to him by the sound of their pulse quickening. By day, Murdock is a fledgling attorney looking to protect the innocent, by night he’s a hooded vigilante looking to punish the criminal underworld infecting New York’s Hells’ Kitchen. 

Season One is very much an early days origin story. Murdock doesn’t yet have his trademark red suit, and he’s still finding his way. Flashbacks to his youth with his pugilist father are particularly effective. So far, Matt’s compatriots, his law partner “Foggy” Nelson (Elden Henson) and client-turned-office-runner Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) less so. But these first episodes are establishing their world, so there’s every hope we’ll see those characters improve. By the end of episode 2 we still haven’t even met crime boss Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) yet, so it feels like Daredevil is just getting rolling, but in riveting, high-quality style.

Cox is excellent, delivering a calm intensity as Murdock, and we’re seeing a uniformly great cast – Rosario Dawson appears in episode 2. Murdock’s fighting scenes are particularly fantastic. Episode 2 concludes with a spectacular 5-minute single-shot hallway fight sequence that’s like something out of Oldboy or The Raid. This is a grim New York, slowly rebuilding itself in the wake of “the incident” – the catastrophic damage wrought in The Avengers, with shady mob construction deals turning the area into a criminal killing ground – providing plenty of work for Murdock in both of his identities.

While Gotham started out strong, it quickly fell into a rut, feeling more like conventional network TV. Daredevil is much more grounded and realistic, both in the physical environment of New York, and in the bone-crunching cinematic quality of DD’s phenomenal fight sequences. It recently broke that the show has already been renewed for a second season, but with different showrunners, as the incredibly busy Drew Goddard (The Cabin in the Woods) is pretty tied-up relaunching Spider-man and Steven DeKnight is working on Incursion, among other things – New Executive Producers Doug Petrie and Marco Ramirez have worked closely with Goddard and DeKnight on season one, so we shouldn't panic that the show’s going to collapse after such a promising start.

If you haven’t dived into Daredevil yet, it’s time to get binging!