Patrick Freyne: Supergirl is devoid of angst, formulaic, silly... and awesome

Kara Zor El (of the Krypton Zor Els) aka Supergirl has just made her debut on the telly (Sky 1, Thursday) but you’ll be familiar with the mythology from her more famous cousin, who briefly appears as a camp baby in red with a curl on his forehead. Like him, Kara is super thanks to science. “Because of the Earth’s yellow sun, you will have great powers on this planet,” Kara’s mother promises sciencilly, moments before sending her to Earth, away from the destruction of her entire civilisation.

Kara is not particularly traumatised by the extinction of her entire race. Millionaire Bruce Wayne loses his parents, and in the time it takes to say “maybe you should get some counselling, Bruce?” he is dressed like a bat, wheezing ominously and thumping the underclass. Supergirl is not like Batman. Planetary devastation has left no shadows on her soul. Her aspirations are summed up by her adoptive sister Alex: “You’ve got a good job, you’re cute and thanks to your alien DNA you can’t get pimples.”

Kara has, as the programme begins, chosen to ignore her super strength, laser eyes and ability to fly, in order to go on embarrassing blind dates, be delightfully klutzy (despite her super reflexes) and work as a bespectacled dogsbody to Calista Flockhart’s Anna-Wintour analogue, Cat Grant. Kara’s just a regular girl with godlike powers trying to make it in the big city.

Grant wants her newspaper, National City, to have a superhero to write about, just like the Daily Planet has Superman, because according to comic-book logic, having a superhero to write about is what will stem the decline of print media. It’s as good a theory as any and resembles The Irish Times’s strategy for 2016 (I’m being fitted for a cape as I write).

Cat gets her hero, when one day a plane is sabotaged and Kara shrugs her shoulders and flies haltingly up to save it. Cat Grant is thrilled and names the new hero “Supergirl”. Kara asks whether it’s sexist to call her Supergirl and not Superwoman. No, it is you who are a sexist for even asking that, says Cat. In fact, says Cat, we should call her Superbaby or maybe Supertot (I might be misremembering the last line).

Enter Vartox
The plane was sabotaged by an escaped alien convict called Vartox who has a strange reptilian ridge on his head for which he probably needs to get an ointment. In the comics, Vartox has a moustache and dresses a bit like Sean Connery in Zardoz – in a revealing waistcoat and nappy combo – but dressing someone like they do in the comics just looks silly on television. So Supergirl goes to confront Vartox wearing knee high boots, a red cape and a crimson ra-ra skirt.

Her costume does not include a mask. No one recognises Kara when she takes her glasses off because the people of National City perceive the world much like babies do. They also think Kara has disappeared forever when she covers her face with her hands.

Vartox beats up Kara but she is saved by the shadowy government agency for which her sister secretly works. Vartox exits waving an axe and being chased by a helicopter (this is an excellent stage direction).

Kara goes away to have a good think about what she’s done and comes back to punch Vartox some more, until he stabs himself to death with a piece of magic space rock. Kara learns that she can do whatever she sets out to do. Hurray! She’s going to make it after all. She has been metaphorically, but more importantly, literally, empowered.

Yes, Supergirl is refreshingly devoid of angst, but very formulaic and very silly.

Keeping it country

Daniel and Majella’s B&B Road Trip (UTV Ireland, Monday) is a programme so Irish it features country’n’Irish music, unapologetically carcinogenic bacon and doesn’t want us getting notions about where we’re going on holidays. This will be a “road trip with a difference,” promises Majella, royal consort to Daniel O’Donnell, because they will be staying in B&Bs and trying to find the “country’s real treasure”. I sit up, presuming this refers to the secret “Dáil gold” buried by Éamon de Valera in the 1950s out of spite, or possibly the heart of beloved billionaire Denis O’Brien, which is heavy with encrusted jewels and melancholy.

Disappointingly the “country’s real treasure” turns out to be “the Irish people themselves”. Still, this surprisingly charming show features Daniel and Majella chuckling on Segways, the sound of Daniel crooning geographically appropriate songs and Daniel superfans weeping for joy.

“This programme makes me feel like a foreigner,” grumps my wife.

“Go back to West Britain,” I tell her. “This is the real Ireland.”

Later in the real Ireland, after a singsong, Daniel and Majella are accosted by terrifying “strawmen” who wear featureless straw-masks and traditionally visit newlyweds with tidings of fortune and fertility. Daniel and Majella aren’t perturbed, happy to conclude with the terrifying line: “And we danced away with our new faceless friends into the wee hours of the evening.” Brilliant. Light up the Wicker Man there, Michael, and happy Halloween.