No Heroics: ABC Say No

A US remake of ITV2's No Heroics has been turned down by ABC, after the filmed pilot failed to entice them into commissioning a full series.

No Heroics USA: Cast

Not many people watched ITV2's No Heroics last year (because it was on ITV2), but creator Drew Pearce probably doesn't care now, because he's helping Jeff Greenstein (Will & Grace) remake his superhero comedy for ABC.

Episode 4 Review

Overall, my thoughts remain the same about No Heroics: it has its moments, but it's ultimately too drab to make you laugh. It's not too shabby for an ITV2 sitcom of limited appeal and budget, but episodes generally breeze by and fail to spark.

No Heroics Review

Its jokes still evaporate from memory, but No Heroic's second episode was more amusing than the premiere - if still too reliant on coarseness.

No Heroics Plays Superheroes for Laughs

An interview with Drew Pearce on the famous technology website Wired.com

You can't have superheroes without geeks and Electroclash and She-Force meet their public tonight at a fan convention which, like everything else about these caped clowns, is a little bit pants.

Filling in their back story, we learn that the girls were once a duo who went by the brilliant name of Lady Trouble. It's little details like that, as well as faultless comedy acting from the entire cast and a super-sized dose of cynicism, that marks No Heroics out as a real labour of love and not just another sitcom.

Tonight also sees The Hotness rush out to foil a drugs bust in Putney while Timebomb, the gay tart, is tempted by sex with a stranger in the pub toilet. Let's face it - not the sort of scenarios you'd ever have seen in the Beeb's limp but long-running My Hero.

No Heroics is a very British take on the superhero genre, largely set in a pub called The Fortress, where the city's caped crusaders gather after a hard day's crime fighting. The pub, however, has two rules that it strictly enforces - no use of special powers or wearing of costumes on the premises.

This would appear to defeat the whole object of the sitcom exercise, but the show is actually enhanced by its self-imposed limitations, directing it towards more character-based comedy. Off-duty the superheroes wear business suits and ties, and actively engage in a canteen culture of sexism, homophobia, preening and bullying, inviting comparison with City bankers at their macho worst. The format makes for quite edgy and uncomfortable comedy, but still offers the opportunity for broader, more slapstick silliness when the heroes leave the confines of the pub and enter the outside world.

I think No Heroics is very promising indeed and would possibly have enjoyed it even more if I had spotted the many superhero in-jokes that my comic book-obsessed friends assure me are peppered throughout the show.

The second episode continues to show the potential in this daft sitcom about off duty superheroes, but you do get the sense that so much more could be done with the format. This week, two of the heroes aren't too pleased to be guests at a fan convention, but sometimes superheroes have to do things they don't want to. A lot of the gags misfire, but there are enough laughs to keep me coming back - just.

ITV2's new comedy No Heroics is fast, funny and a little ingenious: a collection of very British superheroes gather in a pub to compare war wounds and see who is most famous after a day of fighting crime. Like Heroes, then, but with cheese and onion crisps. Their superhero suits are a bit rubbish.

Patrick Baladi's Excelsor is the smarmy frontrunner, but Drew Pearce, the creator/writer, established an engaging collection of pretenders to the throne: The Hotness, a sexually inadequate 'cape' with a penchant for heat; Electro-clash, who let a shop owner get shot and suffer from his injuries because he was sexist; Timebomb is Spanish, depressed, unhinged; She Force is a superhero with the twittering insecurities of Carrie Bradshaw.

No Heroics is a sitcom about superheroes, set mainly in a bar where they all sit around drinking too much, talking about sex, and revealing their deep personal inadequacies. It is quite a nice idea, certainly a much better idea than My Hero, the one with Ardal O'Hanlon as Thermoman, but so far Drew Pearce's script is too ready to fall back on the drink and the sex every time it needs a laugh. It needs a good script editor to sort it out.