There’s a great moment in the final episode of Misfits (Series 4) which stands out for me: the gang are pondering how to break into a nunnery (long story, but imagine a pretty classic Misfits set-up), only for one of them to suggest they actually use the superpowers that originally formed the concept for this series.
All agreed, one of the four, Finn, mutters, "We should really use them more often". It’s a great line, characteristic of the series’ self-deprecating humour and an awareness of the different direction the plot has taken (of which, more below). In fact, it was funny enough that it almost undermined all my reservations about the recent series. But not quite.
Series 4 of Misfits has been a slightly patchy affair, somewhat crippled by the departure of almost all the original cast members, with the last remaining figures done away with by about halfway through the series. The shifting nature of the central group and the departure of long-standing characters means that there was too much time that had to be spent in introduction, and it was only by the final episode that the group dynamic seemed to be nailed down.
It isn’t that this series wasn’t without its good points; an episode centred around a murderous besuited bunny golfer was a highlight both in terms of visuals and action, while in another episode, introducing a third, psychotic double for multiplier Rudy nearly proved a masterstroke, but it fizzled out rather anticlimactically, and it was disappointing that Rudy had no cathartic final confrontation with that part of himself.
The new characters slotted easily into the show’s world, drawn quickly and clearly: angsty Finn, stubborn Jess, amnesiac Abbey and Alex, the mysterious barman, joining Rudy, (and his morose double Rudy 2). And certainly, the show lost none of its aesthetic or tone; sharp banter, greying filters, bleak, concrete disaffection and ultraviolence.
But that one throwaway line still says a lot to me about how much the series has abandoned its roots. When Misfits began, the primary storyline was the ‘superpowers’ that the main characters had, and how it changed their lives, but by series 3, when the cast were given new powers, the protagonists’ powers seemed largely irrelevant to that action. In the latest series, the powers given actually seemed perfunctory: while previously they related to some aspect of a character’s suppressed desires, now they just seem slightly random.
The original cast wondered whether they received their powers for a reason; as it turns out, they didn’t, and subsequently an apparently unlimited number of people (seemingly dependent on how much fresh plot-material is required for any given episode) were given powers too. Of the original cast three died, one was imprisoned in Las Vegas and one moved to Africa off-screen. Everything those characters went through, all the trials and tribulations essentially amounted to nothing – and it’s hard to stay enthused about a show that doesn’t seem to have any purpose or direction, or even any belief in meaning at all- the bleak cityscape seems, somewhere in the course of this series, to have obscured even the faintest rays of sunshine.
I may be being slightly harsh; series 3 had wrapped up a lot of the loose ends, and the departure of the cast presumably wasn’t the writers’ ideal situation either. And with the new cast members established, series 5 (if commissioned) has a solid chance of delivering a more consistent and cohesive programme. And the series has still been a lot of fun to watch, but it just seems like with a lot of what originally made the show so refreshing (superpowers; innovative inclusion of social network activity and videos online) has either been scrapped or has become stale with overuse (violence, crudity and bleak tone) to a point where the series seems like a (much darker) shadow of its former self.
