Daredevil (2015)

When it was announced that due to the success of Marvel's blockbuster film 'Avengers' a television series about the Shield agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg), who was allegedly killed in the film (as it later turned out), was to be produced by ABC, fans had great expectations. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), as the transmedia coherent, fictional universe that was initiated by Marvel producer Kevin Feige is called, should now extend into television.But the series disappointed (initially). Only when it picked up the events of the second film adaptation of the comic book character Thor in Thor - The Dark World, and finally the events of the second film with the character Captain America in Captain America - The Winter Soldier, did a more benevolent attitude towards the series set in among viewers and critics. Airing in the middle of season two of 'Agent's Of Shield,' the eight-episode series 'Agent Carter' extended the MCU's timeline into the past, as it described Agent Carter's experiences after the end of World War II on her way to becoming the first director of SHIELD in a much more skillful manner than the long-running Agents Of SHIELD series had previously been able to do. When Marvel then announced a deal with the video streaming service Netflix, expectations shot up again to unimagined heights, as Netflix had proven with in-house productions like 'House Of Cards' and 'Orange is the New Black' that they could create high-quality series that were not inferior in quality to the previous top dogs in American pay-TV, HBO and Showtime.The first series of the collaboration between Marvel and Netflix is the series 'Daredevil', about the superhero of the same name. 'Lawyer by day, vigilante by night' is the tagline. A blind lawyer, who lost his sight in a toxic substance accident as a child, but whose remaining senses have been superhumanly enhanced as a result, fights organized crime by night in the Hells Kitchen neighborhood of New York. Like any comic book hero, blind lawyer Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) is a reduction to essentials. A classic hero figure with tragedy and pathos. But Christopher Nolan has already successfully shown with his Batman film series (sometimes more, sometimes less) that you can wrest a thoroughly sophisticated narrative from a striking hero story. Daredevil, as the first Marvel television series, also succeeds masterfully. All the characters are realistically 'drawn'. Even the supporting character designed as a 'funny sidekick', Murdock's law partner Foggy Nelson, has been developed multi-dimensionally. And no hero in a classic drama can shine unless the antagonist is also brilliant and overpowering. Criminal boss Wilson 'Kingpin' Fisk (played congenially by Vincent D'onofrio) is a worthy and dangerous adversary. D'Onofrio plays Kingpin as a timid, dormant volcano who, when he does erupt, has been known to forcefully decapitate an adversary by means of a car door. (The scene from episode three is as unpleasant and disturbing as it sounds).Also worthy of mention are the fantastically acting female protagonists. First, there is Murdock and Nelson's former client and later collaborator, Karen Page. Abused in the comics as a secretary and Damsel in Distress, this Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) plays a real character in her own right with a defensible head of her own. The same goes for the night nurse Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson) who, although she allows herself to be saved by Murdock, has to play the thankless role of moral compass, but also knows how to handle a baseball bat when the time comes.With Daredevil, superheroes on TV have finally outgrown their tights and are no longer entertainment for children. The efforts of the other major comic publisher DC, the series Arrow, The Flash and soon Supergirl can not hold a candle to Daredevil. As previously proven by the genre of science fiction with series like Battlestar Galactica, genre entertainment on television can say something serious about the state of our world. The world of the MCU (and by extension, ours) is filled with wonders like magic hammers (or in our world, smart watches and self-driving cars), but it's also a dangerous world, slowly decomposing, where democracy is sacrificed on the altar of capitalism and the consequence of that is not only class but brutal fistfights.The message of the series, however, is also that something can be done about the entropy of the world triggered by the One Percent. Through cooperation, seemingly overpowering opponents, be they corporations or crime bosses or corrupt public servants can be brought to their knees.Maybe it's just coincidence that a red hero from the working class is doing the best job yet. Or maybe Daredevil is just the right hero at the right time.