Sometimes it happens that two big productions, similar in terms of premise, tone and approach, are both launched in the same year, in some cases even just a few weeks apart. This is also the case of The Nevers, Joss Whedon’s return to television productions after having spent more than a decade in the world of Marvel blockbusters, and of the Netflix series The Irregulars. Both start off from a strange phenomenon that ends up endowing a hand of marginals from Victorian-era London with superpowers, thus endangering the classism of the elites.

Of the two series, the most interesting one is certainly The Nevers. It has rhythm, it’s bursting with energy, and its script contains references to current issues. Even more so, there is something extremely captivating in the way in which its socially outcast heroines are fighting to be heard and listened to at all costs, defying the status quo and the era’s patriarchal mentalities.

Everything starts off in August 1896, when a supernatural phenomenon shakes London at its very core. In its aftermath, all sorts of people (mostly women) discover the fact that they have developed superpowers, and it doesn’t take long until society casts them out, branding them with a particular name in order to distinguish them from the rest: The Touched. Three years later, the Orphanage enters the scene, a shelter for the touched which is run by young widow Amalia True (Laura Donnely, a familiar face after her supporting role in Outlander) and Penance Adair (Ann Skelly), whose ability to see pure energy helps her invent all sorts of gadgets, such as an electric car. Soon enough, the two heroines and their “orphans” discover a sinister threat to their emergent social class, whose members are being captured and tortured by a scientist who is obsessed with discovering what exactly turned them into supernatural beings.

The show doesn’t lack exciting scenes at all, but it does oftentimes get lost in directions that don’t seem to lead anywhere. For the time being, we can’t distinguish what the rationale behind Hugo Swann’s (James Norton) presence is, who is a young lord that opens up a brothel of sorts where the richest of Londoners can access the out-of-the-ordinary services of some of the touched. For the time being, it looks like the only purpose of this character is to make The Nevers a show that is as scandalous as Bridgerton, the popular Netflix series that was launched last year, while nothing else is offered to justify the many scenes where he acts as a protagonist.

Even more so, the series’ resemblance to X-Men is bothersome (all sorts of superhuman abilities which are slowly explored by their wielders in an environment they perceive as safe), especially since the script emphasizes the presentation of swathes of new characters, each of them wielding powers that are increasingly miraculous or destructive. Even so, in the four episodes which Films in Frame has had access to, this strategy doesn’t fully envelop the story, and the plot focuses on the latent conflict between those that are in power, whose voice finds a spokesperson in lord Massen (Pip Torrens, most recently seen in the role of the main antagonist in Preacher), and the touched, who are ready to fight their stigmatization and with the above-mentioned threat.

What Joss Whedon knows best is to juggle with a multitude of voices and to create convincing alliances, and his talents in these respects couldn’t be better put to use than in The Nevers, a multi-layered story where nothing is in black and white. One could expect that the touched would be presented as a group of people that have fallen victim to societal rejection, until Maladie – by far, the best name for a female antagonist! – enters the scene, a renegade who slowly turns into a Victorian counterpart to Gotham’s Joker. There is even a scene in which one of the heroes can save only one of the victims who were captured by Maladie, in a direct reference to The Dark Knight.

One of the series’ strengths lies in the fact that it shows how conventional marginalization is, or how little is needed in order to reject someone. The Nevers offers multiple scenes that directly reference racism, sexism, and xenophobia (in this one scene that shows the touched heroines at a party they must wear a ribbon on their bodice in order to distinguish themselves from the other guests), exploring the arbitrary nature of these rejections and the frustration brought on by ridiculous classifications, between us and them. Amongst hand-to-hand fights, steampunk gadgets, and scenes filled with special effects, the show is an ode to the other, which we oftentimes reject and chastise for a simple and sole reason: we don’t, in fact, know them.

The show presents two distinctive directions, in this sense. One is quite obvious, since the rejected one retreats into themselves, frustrated and convinced that they are a second-hand person. Later on, they will have to choose between giving up and becoming a marginal person or becoming an unscrupulous soldier in a bloody revolution. The other direction is more subtle, and involves lord Massen yet again, who venomously whispers, with an aristocrat’s perfect diction, that “the harmony of our world must be upheld”. What he says, in fact, is that rejecting some is a method of validating oneself, a basis of elitism and classism, in the absence of which British society cannot function. Luckily, this perspective is categorically contradicted by that of Amalia True, who says: “Many suffer much more due to the perception of the society than from their own afflictions.”

The Nevers will be streaming on HBO GO starting with the 11th of April. The first season is divided into two parts comprising six episodes each, with the second part premiering later this year.

Ștefan Dobroiu

Born in Piteşti, Romania, in 1980, Ştefan is a graduate from the University of Bucharest, with a degree in Journalism and Communication Sciences. After trying his hand with financial journalism and photography (the latter still being very close to his heart), he put his career on a new path in 2006, when he became the senior editor of Cinemagia. He is also the Romania and Bulgaria correspondent for Cineuropa.org. At Films in Frame he recommends monthly the newest film trailers.