They could be Heroes

Heroes is built around an amazingly durable and sustainable premise. After all super-heroes have been part of popular culture for over 7 decades, featuring stories ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous (more often weighted towards the latter I'll concede). And in a serialised format to boot. The initial season of Heroes paid homage to 4-colour printed predecessors with numerous winks and easter eggs for the comic geeks amongst us.

It was largely a success, despite a slow start and weak ending, making an earnest attempt to marry superheroes and soap-operas. And for television, the concept was relatively unique.

So why on earth is it so readily retreading it's own storylines?

Yes, using time travel to reveal a future threat to be stopped gave the first season a strong impetus, and the "save the cheerleader, save the world" tagline was a stroke of genius.

Using a similar premise to drive the second series, however, displayed a startling lack of creativity.

And using it again in the third season? Erm, really?

There's still a lot to like about Heroes. The cast is strong, there's a good range of characters and personalities, and the production values are top notch - I was particularly impressed with the effects during Hiro's first encounter with the speedster. Really quite beautifully done. The interpersonal dynamics of the various characters are also interesting to watch and many members of the cast have genuine chemistry. Noah and Sylar together formed a surprisingly watchable pairing

But for all it's strengths, there seem to be just as many missed opportunities and plot holes. As I've noted, it's repeatedly using the same plot mechanic to drive each season comes across as lazy. Despite the strong cast, some of the weaker members could do with being trimmed away (surely survival of the fittest plays into the theme of evolution as well) - Mohinder in particular could be lost without harm to show. His portentous voiceovers have long been irritating rather than informative and the latest direction for his character is absurd, even by comic book standards. It's enough to make me think that we need a Darwin Awards for fictional characters.

And however strong a pairing Noah and Sylar may be, there's no getting away from the fact that it's an utterly contrived and absurd development. Noah's reason for going along with is that he's waiting to find out Sylar's weakness so he can safely dispatch him. Not a bad idea really, but it would have carried considerably more weight if he hadn't revealed to a man capable of sapping Sylar's abilities and erasing his memories! Pretty much everything you need to stop Sylar in fact.

So yes, still a lot to like, still a lot to frustrate. Season 3 is off to a better start than season 2 at least, but my guess is that it's still going to be very uneven. I certainly don't see it lasting more than another season or two unless it takes some creative chances.

Bit of a shame that.