THE CAPE

available on DVD

Pilot

Vince Faraday is a good cop in a bad city. The Ark organisation is planning to run Palm City's police force as a commercial concern, and Vince meets the head of the company to sign on. He then discovers that Ark is up to no good and is framed as being the archvillain Chess. Escaping death, he happens upon Max Malinski's Carnival of Crime and learns circus skills that will make him the ultimate crimefighter, The Cape.

Superheroes are the 'in' thing at the cinema at the moment, but nobody has yet been really able to capture that on the small screen. In this opening episode, though, THE CAPE has a damned good go at it. It's an origin story, of course, so there is a great deal of background information to get through, but it's done in an efficient, brisk and believable fashion. The manner of Vince's 'death' is explosive and dramatic and his subsequent moulding into a superhero is well done, down the point that he isn't immediately very good at it, getting beaten up as much as winning out.

There is emotional meat in Vince's loss of his family and the respect of his son, the driving force behind his desire to clear his name and why he takes on the role as the, as yet unmasked, superhero. The fights are pretty good, the humour works and things whizz along at a pace.

It's a bit of a stretch his bumping into the mysterious blogger and all-purpose information gatherer Orwell straight away, but that is nothing to the credibility straining appearance of Vinnie Jones as throwaway goon Scales.

Tarot

Vince goes after Fleming, but is stabbed by a poisoned knife. This is the work of a member of Tarot, a crime syndicate that uses the cards of the tarot as identifiers. Orwell has to help him reach the Carnival to survive and identifies Ark's next victim as the head of the prison service.

This is the first of the episodes as we can expect them to be and it is a step down from the opening origin story, but is still entertaining and has enough action to get by on, not to mention the continuing failure of the Cape himself to be invincible.

The struggle of Trip and Dana to cope in the absence of Vince is less annoying than it might have been and at least the writers have resisted the urge to have a romantic byplay between the pair.

Kozmo

A Russian convict breaks out of an escape-proof prison and comes back to the Carnival to demand that Max hand over his property - the cape. He's willing to kill to get it back. Dana, meanwhile, learns that Ark police officers are clearing the train yards of anyone who might have been a witness to her husband's 'death'.

The Cape gets himself a villain worthy of his stature, a previous owner of the cape. There are also revelations about Orwell that are excellently made just before the end. THE CAPE is settling down into its stride and, whilst not scaling the heights, is proving to be a very solid performer.

Scales

The Cape foments a gang war between Peter Fleming and Scales, bringing them together on a train that Fleming has hired for a travelling fun palace and which soon becomes a runaway.

Vinnie Jones is back as the reptile-skinned Scales and he gives a pantomime performance that is out of step with everyone else in the show. There are some nice moments along the way with Orwell coming face to face with her absentee father and Vince having to work together with Fleming to save the train whilst Max and the team try to rob it.

Dice

A woman from Fleming's past and the ability to see the future is out to kill the crime boss and Vince is forced to protect the man he hates from her in order to be able to clear his name.

Mena Suvari makes for a very fatale femme with some fun and interesting ways of trying to kill Fleming, this being the main part of the plot. The Cape is actually given very little to do, proving once again that it is the actual villains who are the fun in superhero shows rather than the straight men heroes.

Elliott Gould makes a cameo appearance that has got to be leading up to more and Max also knows more than he's telling, whilst Orwell's relationship with Fleming could lead to interesting developments.

Goggles And Hicks

Fleming hires a double act assassination team to kill the Cape. Hicks is the killer whilst Goggles is the man with the technology. They are a formidable team, but they're up against the Cape and Orwell.

More nutso baddies for the Cape take down with the tech help of Orwell and there aren't a whole load of surprises on the way, which is disappointing. The background stuff with Faraday dealing with his pain and looking to his family is stronger here, though the flashbacks are a real pain. He was happy, now he's not. We get it already.

The killers tag the Cape with a transmitter all the better to study him, but since Hicks had him in his sights with a clean shot for the kill, this makes no sense at all.

The Lich Part 1

Fleming wants to buy the port, but is being stalled in the hope that Orwell can track down the missing son of the family that own the land it's built on. The Cape, meanwhile, has to team up with the man who betrayed him in order to save a parade from legendary bogeyman, the Lich.

The twin plots here come together quite nicely in a twist that doesn't quite manage to be a surprising as it would like to be, but which hangs together quite well. The strand with Orwell trying to persuade the institutionalised missing man out of hiding is gloriously shot in almost golden tones that show off Summer Glau to her best advantage.

The Cape's strand is less atmospheric, but has the new chief of police put into a difficult position when he learns that he is nothing more than Fleming's lap dog.

The Lich Part 2

Orwell is in the hands of the Lich, who has her drugged and flitting between reality and fantasy without control. Vince must call on the help of his wife in order to find her before the marriage the Lich is planning wrecks her mind completely..

This is a complete change of pace for the show as the plot-driven antics of last week's search for the poison gives way to a more character-centric story that deals with Orwell's cracking mind and the Lich's already completely bonkers one. How the man could be considered as the underworld's biggest threat when he's such a helpless nutjob is anyone's guess.

Summer Glau gets some good stuff to work with in both the drugged reality and the imaginings of her mind, making up for the pedestrian mystery solving of the rescue efforts.

Razer

Scales calls in a bombmaker to destroy Max and Carnival of Crime, but as he's never been seen by his new employer, Vince takes his place undercover and starts to destroy the new alliance of bad guys. Until the real Razer gets free, anyhow.

Another standard police procedural storyline gets a single appearance by the Cape in order to keep to the show's identity. It seems that nobody works with anyone they know anymore.

More interesting are the undercurrents as Elliott Gould's psychiatrist strikes a deal with Chess for Peter Fleming's soul, Max has deeper plans for Vince and Orwell shows that fragile minds run in the family.

Endgame

Vince has rattled Fleming with his revelations on the TV and he retaliates by framing Marty for all the trouble. Dana sees a chance to get Marty to confess and Vince steps in to protect him, but will that be enough?

It's the season finale and whilst there is drama there isn't the requisite amount of action. A superhero show needs to have goodies and baddies slugging it out in big action set pieces. That's what keeps them ruling at the box office, but the TV just can't compete on the spectacle side of things and that's why they fail.

THE CAPE has been a very decent drama series with good performances, but the plots and the action haven't stood up and so the show has been cancelled and Palm City's vigilante will continue the fight to clear his name no more.