TV Series: Daredevil

I liked Daredevil, the Marvel TV series about the much-underrated superhero. It is dark, gritty, violent, flawed and oddly unsettling, perhaps because I never quite knew what was going to happen next. I was on tenterhooks through the first season. Besides, I've always been partial to Daredevil, just as I am to Batman, the Hulk and Wolverine.

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Going back, I liked the 2003 Daredevil film because it lived up to my comic-book image of The Man Without Fear. Ben Affleck was convincing as Matt Murdock—the blind lawyer by day and vigilante by night. For many years, I hoped there would be a sequel. There wasn't. The TV series more than makes up for the gap.

British actor Charlie Cox steps convincingly into Affleck's shoes and raises hell in Hell's Kitchen, the dark side of Manhattan. But this Daredevil is not infallible. He makes mistakes and gets walloped a few times, including by his arch-enemy Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin, who clobbers him much as Bane does Batman in The Dark Knight Rises. Like Batman, the caped crusader of Gotham City, Daredevil falls only to rise stronger, wiser and more determined.

A little wisdom is what Daredevil picks up after his often impulsive and bloody fights with local thugs, junkies, kidnappers and extortionists. With every episode, he learns more about the masterminds behind his battles—the Russian mafia, the Japanese Yakuza and Chinese gangsters, and eventually Fisk himself—who want to carve up Hell's Kitchen between them. Slowly, he also learns how to stay one step ahead of his ruthless enemies.

A television series provides more room for longer stories, and Daredevil gives us much more than the heroics of its vigilante. It also offers glimpses into the backstories of familiar characters—Matt Murdock, his friend and law partner Foggy Nelson, their first client-turned-secretary Karen Page, crime reporter Ben Urich and Wilson Fisk—which adds depth, twists and suspense to the story.

Daredevil is stark and realistic, with a degree of brutality not common in superhero films. Murdock and Fisk, while representing good and evil, share troubled childhoods and lives haunted by demons of the past. This prompts Hell's Kitchen's supervillain to suggest that the two men aren't so different from each other. Yet each has his own reasons for wanting to make the neighbourhood a better place.

As Daredevil, Cox is every bit as good as Affleck, while, as Kingpin, Vincent D'Onofrio is several heads above Michael Clarke Duncan in the film version. What works particularly well is his depiction of the bald Kingpin as a businessman who is both vicious and vulnerable. He reeks of evil and yet doesn't necessarily seem like one, if that makes any sense.

Finally, what I found particularly appealing about Daredevil is the music—the opening theme and the background score that plays during critical moments, heightening the thrill and tension. It complements a series that, for me, deserved more recognition.

Daredevil remains one of the darker and more compelling superhero adaptations I've watched. It isn't simply about a man in a costume beating up bad guys; beneath the violence is a story about justice, loyalty, morality, and two damaged men who see the world very differently.