Sunday, November 12, 2006 - Over the last two months, the NBC comic book inspired drama Heroes has become the surprise hit of the fall season.  It's quickly emerged as the darling of television networks and there have been numerous articles in the press acclaiming everything from its style to its narrative quality to the diversity of its cast.  The press has even gone so far as to call it the show that might just "save NBC".  From what NBC needed saving (besides running third in ratings most weeks), I'm not entirely sure but I do think the show deserves the press and credit it's getting.  It is great television, maintains an engaging plot and delivers a slam dunk fun ride week after week.

How well is the show doing?  It pulled down a strong 7.9 rating (11 share) with it's first episode and climbed to a 9.6 (15 share) with the October 23rd episode "Hiroes".  Last week's episode "Nothing to Hide" pulled down an 8.9 rating (13 share) and scored a 15th place ranking against all prime-time TV shows for the week.  Incredible work for a drama on Monday night.  Heroes has quickly become one of the strongest shows for a struggling NBC.

This fact should cause NBC to hold their head high for the success.  I say this because it's not easy to take a comic character or comic based concept to the small screen.  There are obvious differences between the printed page and film.  For one, the way comics let you inside the inner narrative of a character can be a tough transition to episodic television or film.  At other times, it's equally hard to render the look and feel of a character's abilities within the world of film.  That transition can often be awkward at best under feature film circumstances.  To pull it off with a smaller budget for television is doubly impressive.  Where Heroes really succeeds is the way it humanizes the characters letting the viewer feel what it might be like to suddenly discover your world is different than it was yesterday and life is no longer what it once seemed.  Heroes has scored big while maintaining, in many subtle ways, the style and feel of a comic or well narrated graphic novel.

Heroes is the second best new show of the fall season.

After heaping all this praise, I would like to assert for the record that I think Heroes is the second best new show of the new fall season.  For weeks now, I was convinced it was the best thing out there but, over the last fourteen days, I'm very pleased to admit that I've been proven completely wrong.  On a whim, I grabbed the pilot episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip off ITunes (it only costs $1.99 to try it) and found myself blown away by the storytelling, the humor, the subject matter and the quality of the writing.  It's like nothing else out there and in this case that is a very good thing.  For those of you not in the know, Studio 60 takes place behind the scenes of a fictional live sketch comedy show with a format very similar to NBC's legendary Saturday Night Live.The show is headlined by Matthew Perry (Chandler from Friends) and Bradley Whitford (Josh Lyman from the West Wing).  It honestly combines what was good from both their prior hits and takes that drive in a totally new and stylish direction.

Every comic fan out there is already watching Heroes.  I'm writing this week to ask that you please leave the television on as that show comes to an end.  Give Studio 60 a try in the follow-up 10 PM to 11 PM slot.  It's struggled in the rating so far and looked doomed a few weeks ago.  On November 9th, NBC renewed itfor the remainder of the 2006-07 season giving it a chance to grow an audience.  In a recent press release NBC explained...

"From the start, they have delivered the superb show that we wanted. The critical support has been rock-solid and there is a passionate core audience. We can't wait for what's going to come in the remainder of the season."

They believe in the show and have given it a rare chance to survive despite the early ratings.  This alone is a bit unheard of in today's "kill it now" live or die one hour drama market.  I honestly think, if you give it a chance, you will come to believe in the show as well.

If you have ITunes, I couldn't give a higher recommendation to you to grab the pilot and see what you've been missing.  As I told Katie over the weekend, if you watch this episode I promise you will immediately want to see the next episode.  In Katie's case, I showed her the pilot at about 10:00 PM as she wasn't quite ready to call it a night.  She finally forced herself to stop watching four episodes later at 2:00 AM.  Yes, it's really that good.  Over the last 14 days, I've spent roughly $14 (plus tax) catching up on what I missed (seven episodes to date) and I have yet to see a bad show.  For the price of two tickets to a movie, you can enjoy seven hours of a show that's about as good as it gets.

Okay, hard sell over... Long story short...

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