Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Supacell’ On Netflix, Where Five South Londoners With Superpowers Try To Save Their Loved Ones While Avoiding Being Captured

Has there ever been a show about a group of people with superpowers where the group is all Black? Probably not; shows like Black Lightning and movies like Black Panther were more about one superhero than a group. But now, thanks to British hip-hop star Rapman, there is a show about an all-Black superhero team.

SUPACELL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A woman in a hospital gown runs down a bleak, poorly-lit corridor. She’s being chased by guards, and when she hits a door, her eyes go yellow and she blasts the huge door off its hinges. Then she’s shot to death by the guards, and dragged past the glass-enclosed cells of the other prisoners as an example, a smear of blood trailing behind her.

The Gist: Michael Lasaki (Tosin Cole) has plans. He’s a delivery driver, but he and his girlfriend Dionne (Adelayo Adedayo) have scrupulously saved enough to get a condo, and after doing the math, he pulls up to D, who’s walking in their South London neighborhood, behind the wheel of a brand new blue BMW. He’s finally ready to pop the question to D, whom he’s known and dated since they were both kids.

Andre (Eric Kofi-Abrefa) is trying to get his life together, but his ex is pissed at him for not being able to pay the child support he owes. Still, she lets him spend time with their teenage son AJ (Ky-Mani Carty), which AJ is happy about. He does have a new job in telemarketing, and seems to be doing well, when his boss calls him in; his background check turned up a conviction and his boss has no choice but to let him go.

Tayo (Josh Tedeku) is known to most of his friends as Tazer. We see him and his red-clad gang get into a fight with a rival blue-clad gang at a house party. His boys run after Tazer gets stabbed, and visit him at the hospital. He lives with his grandmother, who doesn’t know exactly what Tazer is doing, but when she sees his blood-soaked shirt, she has an idea. When she mentions her promise to his mother, Tazer tells her never to mention her again.

Sabrina (Nadine Mills) is a nurse who seems to have guy problems; when her boyfriend stands her up on a date, her sister Sharleen (Rayxia Ojo) convinces her to go to his house; of course, she finds out there and then that he’s been cheating on her.

Rodney (Calvin Demba) is a small-time drug dealer who seems to have customers who pay him in small coins and has to actually approach strangers and make a sales pitch. When he is about to land a bigger customer, his car fails him. As he runs towards the bus, though, his eyes go yellow and he finds himself on a country road — outside of Edinburgh, Scotland.

When Sabrina finds that her boyfriend is cheating on her, she walks away from him. When he tries to get her to talk, her eyes go yellow and she telekinetically flings him into the doorway of his building.

After Andre goes to an ATM and sees that he has a negative balance, his eyes go yellow and he slams the ATM so hard, the wall around it cracks and pound notes come streaming out of it.

Finally, Michael encounters Tazer’s gang on his route, who demand money to let him deliver the package he has. Tazer, still pissed over getting stabbed, ends up plunging a knife in Michael’s chest. But then Michael’s eyes go yellow and he returns to the delivery truck, driving up to Tazer’s neighborhood. This time he manages to save himself, but he can still hear the previous confrontation buzzing in his head.

He successfully executes his proposal to D, but as they’re having some celebratory wall sex, his eyes go yellow again. This time, though, he finds himself in an abandoned Piccadilly Circus, seeing five black-clad people with powers fight a common enemy that has come through a strange portal. One of them is Tazer. Another looks exactly like him.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Supacell feels like a more dramatic version of The Boys, or an all-Black version of Heroes.

Our Take: Created and written by Rapman (aka Andrew Onwubolu), Supacell starts off a bit slowly as the stories of the five burgeoning superheroes discover that they have those superpowers. In trying to set up the stories of the five heroes, Rapman tries to show the individual struggles all of them go through, struggles that perhaps aren’t necessarily exclusive to the Black community, but definitely are ones that they may have to deal with more than most.

The person who gets the most background story is Michael, as he weaves in and out of the lives of the other soon-to-be heroes, not aware that he has something in common with these strangers. He delivers a package to Sabrina’s sister, has Rodney try to sell him drugs, and goes down the hall from where Tazer is recovering in the hospital, so that his mother can listen to people from a sickle-cell treatment center.

That’s also by design; each of the first five episodes are named after a different member of this super crew, so it seems that we’ll concentrate on each person as he or she deals with these powers and try to figure out how to use them to help themselves and their loved ones.

But there’s also the matter of the prison we saw from time to time in the first episode. It seems that there’s an organization, led by a man named Ray (Eddie Marsan), whose goal is to take these superpowered Londoners off the street. So as these people figure out their powers, there’s an existential threat to not only them but the people they love, as Michael finds out as his future self shows him that D died a few months after they got engaged.

So, as slow as the first episode was, there’s a lot going on. What will make Supacell a satisfying watch, though, is if Rapman is able to balance the superpowers stuff with the Black experience in 2024 South London.

Sex and Skin: Michael and D have wall sex before Michael transports to that strange future date. Don’t you love how easy it is for people in TV and movies to have vertical sex?

Parting Shot: Future Michael tells Michael, “The fact that you’re here means you means you can stop this. Means you can save her.”

Sleeper Star: We’re looking forward to seeing Eddie Marsan as Ray, because Marsan brings his all to whatever role he plays, whether it’s smarmy or sincere.

Most Pilot-y Line: Twosie (Andy Thompson) raps to a song the rival gang created about Tazer getting stabbed. Is he really that stupid?

Our Call: STREAM IT. While there’s a lot about Supacell that we’ve seen before, there’s also enough that’s new to keep us watching, especially given the performances of its main cast.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.