Arrow- Season 1, Episode 1: Pilot

"Oh, and Lost? They were all dead."

This is not the straight superhero show I was expecting; instead it's the tale of Oliver Queen spending five years as Robinson Crusoe on an island in the South China Sea, emerging as a kind of Robin Hood figure (secretly), reintegrating himself into society. And the mystery of what happened over that five years is clearly going to unfold gradually. An awful lot is deliberately not explained. It's a very promising premise, but not what I was expecting. Mind you, I know very little of the Green Arrow comics.

So Oliver is very rich, has inherited his vast wealth, has been a bit of an irresponsible playboy figure, and was the only survivor. During the accident he was cheating with the sister of his girlfriend Laurel: that's awkward. Laurel and her mate are lawyers helping little people against big bad corporate types.

Intriguingly, Oliver is briefly kidnapped by masked men who are very keen to know what happened during the shipwreck, and what his father said to him; this highlights to us, the viewer, that what was said must have been significant. And Oliver has a list from his dad, seemingly of rich had people; the first from the list has had his money transferred to the bank accounts of good causes; it seems that Green Arrow is Robin Hood in more ways than one.

And then we get a final reveal- the baddies are working for Moira, Oliver's mother! This is addictive stuff already.

The Flash- Season 1 Episode 1: Pilot

"You're not a hero. You're just a man who got struck by lightning."

Yes, I'm jumping straight into the Arrowverse, as though I didn't already have enough ongoing TV shows, but bear with me. I'm not necessarily going to start watching them in strict order but I'll get it sorted before any real crossovers, if you'll please ignore Green Arrow's cameo here!!!

This is a very assured pilot episode, especially as superhero origin stories are notoriously difficult to make narrative sky interesting. This manages to be both gripping TV and to set up a premise with lots of hooks for future narrative use. Barry Allen is a police pathologist who is extremely good at his job, as shown by the Sherlock-style visual narrative tricks. He also has a traumatic event in his childhood in which his mother Nora died in bizarre circumstances and his dad Henry was wrongly imprisoned for the crime; that's powerful stuff right there.

We're introduced to his step-sister Iris West, with whom he has a bit of romantic tension, and his solid detective step-dad, Joe. All this is established before the inevitable Event; a particle accelerator which gives him super-speed, and he's helped in this by Dr Harrison Wells of STAR Labs, ably assisted by Caitlin and Cisco. That's a solid set-up right there.

Issues? Well. Grant Gustin is a good actor but I'm not sure if his boy band looks are quite appropriate for a part like this, but time will tell.

Incidentally, it's a nice touch that Barry's dad is portrayed by the same actor who played the Flash back in the early '90s.