Smallville Review

The premise was smart for its moment. Put Clark Kent in a high school, make the meteor shower that brought him a source of weekly mutations, and let the mythology arrive slowly through people he will one day be defined by. For three or four seasons that works, largely because Michael Rosenbaum is superb. His Lex Luthor is a young man genuinely trying to be better than his father, whose slide into villainy is charted across a hundred small betrayals, and the friendship at the centre of the show gives it a tragedy the format could not otherwise support.

John Schneider's Jonathan Kent is a warmer version of the character than the films have managed. The rest is patchy. The freak of the week structure produces a great many interchangeable episodes about a boy with electricity powers, the studio ban on flight and costume becomes an active hindrance once the cast leaves school, and the later seasons stretch across a Metropolis newsroom, a superhero team and a series of villains without ever letting the story finish. Ten seasons is at least four too many.