8 great superhero series that have nothing to do with Marvel or DC

The Nevers — HBO

HBO’s new superhero drama doesn’t bill itself as a superhero drama…but it is one. The Nevers is about a group of unrelated people — mostly women — living in Victorian London who wake up one day to find that they possess extraordinary powers. Lead character Amalia True gets flashes of the future. Her best friend Penance Adair can make extraordinary electrical inventions. One woman can turn things to ice, another can shatter surfaces with a touch, one guy can possess birds. And the lot of them are persecuted by a bigoted British establishment who sees them as a threat to the stability of the empire.

So we’ve got a group of ordinary people with mismatched powers feared and ostracized by polite society. Ladies and gentlemen, we are officially looking at a riff on the X-Men. Yes, it’s a period piece, and yes, the characters are mostly women, and yes, the milieu is pretty different…but this is a riff on the X-Men, and that’s not a bad thing. The X-Men franchise has endured for a reason, and The Nevers has a lot of what made it fun, plus a healthy dollop of Victorian gothic drama, an ongoing mystery, charmingly off-kilter dialog, and committed performances from a large cast of eager-to-please actors.

The first season of The Nevers is rolling on as we speak. I honestly don’t know where it’ll end up, but I’m on board for the ride.