Eventually, "The Gifted" won me over. Whilst it's clearly never anywhere near the top tier of the current TV options available, by the end of the series the show interwove itself more with the wider X-Men film and TV series enough that I was interested enough to not only keep watching, but make the decision that I am interested in a second series.
The show focuses on the Strucker family, led by a reliable pair of genre hands Stephen Moyer and Amy Acker, who upon realising that their children Lauren (Natalie Alyn Lind) and Andy (Percy Hynes White) are mutants, attempt to make contact with the Mutant Underground. The organisation have been put in place by the currently missing X-Men to try and keep them innocent mutants safe from Sentinel services and their shady work with Trask Industries.
AS you can see from that synopsis, there are apparent links to the movie universe in the series (though no major characters from them appear in the series). Without looking to give too much away, the Hellfire Club also begins to feature as the series progresses. These links continue behind the camera, with Lauren Shuler Donner, Simon Kinberg, Len Wiseman and Bryan Singer producing in various capacities, with the later three directing episodes too. Together they make a decent looking show whose effects, both practical and CGI are good throughout.
Less successful are the characters and performances that make up the principle cast. Almost all are familiar tropes, angsty teens, heroic mutants, loners who won't join the team, unprincipled scientists out for the greater good. The only touch of variance to any of this comes from Coby Bell's Sentinel Services agent who runs the gambit (pun intended) of a man conflicted by personal loss and a belief in doing what's right. It is pretty slow too, though this picks up as the series goes on. It could do with taking a further step away from weekly stories towards a bigger season arc with a deeper story. The potential second season arc could be that story, if they progress from how the first ends.
I don't think it is as good as any of the DC/CW ouput... or Netflix's Marvel shows, but it's a reasonably serviceable few hours of Network television with a couple of ideas that could elevate it if the production team choose to progress them. (Or Disney might buy Fox and cancel it all so they can make their own X-Men shows).
The show focuses on the Strucker family, led by a reliable pair of genre hands Stephen Moyer and Amy Acker, who upon realising that their children Lauren (Natalie Alyn Lind) and Andy (Percy Hynes White) are mutants, attempt to make contact with the Mutant Underground. The organisation have been put in place by the currently missing X-Men to try and keep them innocent mutants safe from Sentinel services and their shady work with Trask Industries.
AS you can see from that synopsis, there are apparent links to the movie universe in the series (though no major characters from them appear in the series). Without looking to give too much away, the Hellfire Club also begins to feature as the series progresses. These links continue behind the camera, with Lauren Shuler Donner, Simon Kinberg, Len Wiseman and Bryan Singer producing in various capacities, with the later three directing episodes too. Together they make a decent looking show whose effects, both practical and CGI are good throughout.
Less successful are the characters and performances that make up the principle cast. Almost all are familiar tropes, angsty teens, heroic mutants, loners who won't join the team, unprincipled scientists out for the greater good. The only touch of variance to any of this comes from Coby Bell's Sentinel Services agent who runs the gambit (pun intended) of a man conflicted by personal loss and a belief in doing what's right. It is pretty slow too, though this picks up as the series goes on. It could do with taking a further step away from weekly stories towards a bigger season arc with a deeper story. The potential second season arc could be that story, if they progress from how the first ends.
I don't think it is as good as any of the DC/CW ouput... or Netflix's Marvel shows, but it's a reasonably serviceable few hours of Network television with a couple of ideas that could elevate it if the production team choose to progress them. (Or Disney might buy Fox and cancel it all so they can make their own X-Men shows).