HOUSE OF THE DRAGON to get shorter seasons moving forwards

HBO will give Game of Thrones spin-off/prequel series House of the Dragon shorter season orders moving forwards.

HBO renewed House for a second year just after the launch of the show last summer, which saw it become HBO's biggest-ever, first-run drama. However, no episode count was given at the time. It's now being reported that the original plan was for a 10-episode run like the first season, but this has now been downgraded to 8 episodes.

According to HBO, the move was "story-driven," but there are indications that this is part of a cost-cutting drive across all Warner Brothers-related companies following their recent merger with Discovery (which has led to the gutting of content for the HBO Max streaming service). It will certainly disappoint fans already facing a two-year wait for the second season, whilst executive producer and creator of the source material George R.R. Martin had previously praised HBO for sticking with 10 episodes a year as other streamers ruthlessly moved to 8 or even 6 episodes per season.

However, the silver lining is that HBO may give an early third season order for the show, allowing it to flow from work on Season 2 straight into Season 3, in a bid to reduce the gap between the two seasons. Season 2 had a number of late script rewrites (partially a result of the episode compression) and will only start filming in the next few weeks, over two years after shooting on Season 1 began.

The length of modern TV seasons has proven a thorny issue, with fans increasingly irate at waiting multiple years for a very short run of episodes, whilst increased production costs and a shortage of vfx studio capacity encouraging streamers and cable companies to look at shorter runs with more of a focus on quality. But with quality also being criticised for many productions, and the shorter (and thus less-well-paid) working periods forcing writers and even showrunners to split their attention between multiple projects simultaneously, it appears this move is not working for everyone.

Some venues are now experimenting with a return to longer runs. Andor on Disney+ was recently praised for its 12-episode first season (divided into several shorter arcs) and the upcoming Daredevil: Born Again show will consist of a remarkable 18 episodes.

New DAREDEVIL series in development at Disney+

Disney+ have put into development a new season of Daredevil, the extremely popular Marvel drama series that previously ran for three seasons at Netflix and spawned a number of spin-off and companion shows, culminating in the Defenders event mini-series. Disney+ recently gained the rights to all the Netflix series and seemingly formalised Daredevil as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe when actors Charlie Cox (Matt Murdoch/Daredevil) and Vincent D'Onofrio (Wilson Fisk/Kingpin) appeared in Spider-Man: No Way Home and the streaming series Hawkeye respectively.

Matt Corman and Chris Ord will serve as showrunners on the new project. They previously co-created Covert Affairs and have worked on several other projects as a writing team. At the moment, none of the creative team from the previous Netflix iteration of the property are involved. However, it seems inevitable that at least Cox will reprise his role as the Man Without Fear, and hopefully the rest of the cast will follow.

The new series will likely answer the niggling question of if events of the Netflix shows are canon, rather than just using the same actors to portray a similar version of the characters. Fans will be hoping that other characters make the cut, particularly Krysten Ritter's take on Jessica Jones and Jon Bernthal's intense portrayal of Frank Castle/The Punisher.

The project is only early in development. Beforehand, Disney+ will launch a number of other Marvel TV shows including Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Echo, Secret Invasion, Ironheart, Armor Wars, Agatha: House of Harkness and Wakanda, as well as a second season of Loki.

Disney+ to host all six Netflix Marvel shows and AGENTS OF SHIELD from mid-March

Disney+ will add all six of the Marvel Netflix TV shows and ABC's Agents of SHIELD to their roster on 16 March.

The package includes three seasons apiece of Daredevil and Jessica Jones, two seasons apiece of Luke Cage, Iron Fist and The Punisher, the team-up mini-series The Defenders and all seven seasons of ABC's Agents of SHIELD. That's 20 seasons of television, totalling 297 episodes, that will be making the jump to the service.

The fate of the Netflix shows was initially unclear after Netflix confirmed they were leaving the service a few months ago. However, the appearance of the Netflix version of Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin, played by Vincent D'Onofrio in Hawkeye and the appearance of Matt Murdock/Daredevil in Spider-Man: No Way Home, played by Charlie Cox, suggested that those shows were going to be brought into the Marvel Cinematic Universe canon.

The fate of the two well-regarded ABC series Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter was a lot more ambiguous. Agents of SHIELD had gone to some lengths to tie itself in with the MCU, featuring guest appearances by Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury and Jamie Alexander as Sif, reprising their roles from the film series, alongside lead actor Phil Coulson, with Clark Gregg reprising his role from the films, and Hayley Atwell as Agent Peggy Carter.

Avengers: Endgame saw a tie-in with Agent Carter, with James D'Arcy reprising his role as Jarvis in that movie. However, the final seasons of Agents of SHIELD saw a splintering away from the events of the films, reportedly due to the film team not wanting to give the TV crews any secret information about the movies for it fear of leaking.

Agent Carter is not, so far, joining Disney+ in the United States, but it is already available on the service in other countries, including the UK.

To accommodate the new shows, which feature swearing, violence and more adult content such as sex and drugs, Disney+ will be enhancing its parental controls in the US. In the UK and some other countries, Disney+ operates an adult-oriented subchannel called Star TV, which is likely to host the shows outside the US.

Marvel regains TV rights to the Netflix Marvel characters

Marvel has regained, in full, the TV and film rights to the characters from Netflix's Defenders universe: Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and The Punisher, plus the crossover event series that linked them together.

Netflix collaborated with Marvel, via their ABC production arm, to make three seasons of Daredevil and Jessica Jones apiece and two seasons apiece of the other shows, plus the event crossover mini-series, totalling thirteen seasons of television produced in just four years. Netflix co-funded the series in return for transmission rights, but ABC - owned by Disney - actually made them, and a two-year exclusivity contract was put in place so that the no-one else could make shows or movies featuring those characters after the contract ended. Today, that limitation for both Jessica Jones and The Punisher expired, returning control of the characters to Disney and Marvel Studios.

Disney's plans for the characters remains unclear. Of the group, only Daredevil and The Punisher were known to a wider audience before production started, but the shows did bring a new level of fame to the other characters, particularly Jessica Jones and Iron Fist's supporting character, Colleen Wing. Based on the contract, it appears that Marvel are free to bring the characters back with the same actors playing them, but it's less clear if they can refer to the events of the Netflix shows.

One notable issue is that, so far, Disney have kept all of their MCU output in the "family audience" category. The Netflix Marvel shows were very much not in this category, with swearing, sexual content and much more graphic violence than we've seen in the MCU to date. One possibility would be to create bring back the characters but with a more familiar MCU style or tone. Another, potentially more interesting, possibility would be to keep the adult tone and create a sort of M-rated MCU, which these characters could inhabit alongside Deadpool, whose forthcoming third film (but first under the MCU banner) has been confirmed to be an adult-oriented film. One can imagines Disney continuing these shows on Hulu, which is rumoured to be taking on a more "adult Disney" role, and on the Disney Star service internationally (a sub-channel of Disney+ featuring somewhat more adult programming).

It's also unclear what will happen to the existing shows. Netflix are currently streaming all of them as normal, but their distribution rights are no longer exclusive and they could appear elsewhere, such as on a Disney streaming service.

Rumours have circulated that Charlie Cox's Daredevil (whose rights expired much earlier) has already been seen on the set of the third Spider-Man film, currently shooting, and the MCU powers that be have already confirmed that they strongly considered portalling the Defenders in from New York City at the end of Avengers: Endgame before deciding that would be too random for people who hadn't seen the shows, indicating that Marvel Studios are well aware of the popularity of these versions of the characters and are certainly considering ways to bring them back.

Marvel is not lacking for content on Disney+ in the meantime, however, with WandaVision currently airing, soon to be followed by The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki and What If...?, with Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel and She-Hulk in production and Moon Knight, Secret Invasion, Ironheart and Armor Wars in pre-production (a further series, Wakanda, has been announced but is unlikely to go into production until after Black Panther 2 is released).

Netflix cancels THE PUNISHER and JESSICA JONES

In the biggest non-surprise story of the year so far, Netflix has decided to terminate their four-year collaboration with Marvel. They have now cancelled The Punisher just after the release of its second season and Jessica Jones ahead of the launch of its third. This follows the cancellation of Iron Fist, Luke Cage and Daredevil last year.

Marvel pinned the blame on Netflix, saying the streaming service had the final say on whether to renew the show or not. Netflix in turn have blamed Marvel for trying to change their contractual agreement (most notably by reducing their seasons from 13 to 10 episodes, as every single viewer urgently wanted). However, it's hard not to see the real reason here: in autumn this year Marvel's parent company will be launching the Disney+ streaming service with a number of new shows, including mini-series focusing on MCU characters Scarlet Witch, Vision, Loki, Winter Soldier and Falcon, not to mention multiple Star Wars shows and Disney's immense back catalogue of TV series and films. Netflix decided it was not worthwhile to effectively be promoting a rival service's characters for them.

Marvel's statement is interesting, however, confirming that they will be exploring these characters again in the future. Whether that is directly continuing these shows with the same casts - which they can do after a two-year break - or some kind of full reboot is unclear.

Counting the still-to-air Jessica Jones Season 3, the Marvel/Netflix collaboration has chalked up 13 seasons and 161 episodes in less than four years, which is quite impressive. Some of the seasons were exceptional (in particular the first season apiece of Daredevil and Jessica Jones), although others were not, and the big team-up in The Defenders fell a little flat. Given the sheer speed at which the shows were producing episodes, which saw some fans fall off the bandwagon, and the increasing variance in quality, the cancellation of the shows is perhaps not entirely the disaster it would have been a couple of years back. Still, Daredevil had gotten his mojo back in the third season and Iron Fist's second season was a great improvement over the first, so there are some regrets about seeing where these stories woudl have gone.

The final season of Jessica Jones and the Marvel/Netflix universe is expected to be released in the next couple of months.

DAREDEVIL cancelled after three seasons, Marvel hints at reboot

Netflix has cancelled their flagship Marvel superhero TV series Daredevil after three seasons.

The news comes after the cancellation of two of Daredevil's spin-offs, Luke Cage and Iron Fist, both after two seasons apiece, and despite the fact that Daredevil's third season (released last month) achieved greater critical acclaim and buzz than any Marvel Netflix show since the first season of Jessica Jones. This seemingly confirms that Disney (who own Marvel) is clearing house of the shows and pulling them to avoid any competition for their new Disney+ streaming service, which will launch in late 2019 with several live-action Marvel shows slated to join the service.

Daredevil's first season launched the Marvel/Netflix collaboration back in 2015 with one of Netflix's highest-ever rated shows, which was widely regarded as one of the then-fledgling streaming service's main attractions (alongside Orange is the New Black and House of Cards) to convince people to sign up. No less than four spin-offs followed - Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and The Punisher - as well as a team-up show, The Defenders, which ran for a single mini-series in 2017. The Marvel/Netflix universe initially did very well, with the number of viewers apparently peaking in the first season of Luke Cage (which managed to briefly shut down Netflix altogether as too many people were trying to watch it simultaneously). However, the total amount of viewership per season has apparently dropped significantly since then. The critical buzz surrounding the shows has also cooled. Both of these trends reversed with Daredevil Season 3, but apparently not enough to help save the show.

Marvel and Netflix's formerly cosy relationship has been strained by Disney's announcement of Disney+, a new streaming service which will launch next year with two Marvel mini-series, one starring Tom Hiddleston as Loki and another starring Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan as Falcon and Winter Soldier. Both series will be directly produced by the team that makes the Marvel movies and will see feature film actors directly reprising their roles. Talks are also continuing for a third series focusing on the character of Scarlet Witch, starring Elizabeth Olsen. Disney+ will also feature the first-ever Star Wars live action TV series, with Pedro Pascal to star in an ongoing series called The Mandalorian whilst Diego Luna is reprising his role as morally flexible Rebel intelligence agent Cassian Andor for a Rogue One prequel series.

Whilst Netflix has met the challenge of competition from Amazon Prime Video and CBS All Access with equanimity, they regard Disney+ and Disney's acquisition of Hulu as much more dangerous competition, due to Disney's much healthier finances (Netflix is still funding its original programming through debt, whilst Disney has profit to burn), a distinct lack of buzz around Netflix's recent shows (they arguably haven't had a really big crossover, must-watch hit since the second season of Stranger Things) and the dramatically slowing uptake of the Netflix service, particularly in the US and Europe. The loss of two of Netflix's flagship shows, Orange is the New Black and House of Cards, is also a major problem, arguably leaving Stranger Things (which will return for a third season in 2019) as their sole big, must-see show.

Marvel have put the dagger in even further in their announcement today, confirming that the Daredevil character - but not necessarily the actor, Charlie Cox - will resurface in future MCU projects, suggesting a recasting of the character and his promotion to the movies for Marvel Phase 4 (which will reportedly focus on lesser-known Marvel characters, and could potentially include other characters from the Marvel Netflix universe as well). It also sounds like Disney want to consolidate their Marvel branding into one, family-friendly tone which the adult, violent Netflix shows were fundamentally incompatible with.

With this news, it is now inevitable that the third season of Jessica Jones and the second season of The Punisher, which are expected in the spring and summer of 2019 respectively, will also be their last.

Daredevil: Season 3

Matt Murdoch is missing, presumed dead after the incident at Midland Plaza. His friends, journalist Karen Page and lawyer Foggy Nelson, are trying to get on with their lives but find their grief is hard to forget. But Murdoch is still alive, recuperating and facing the stark realisation that only Matt or Daredevil can survive, not both of them. When Wilson Fisk is unexpectedly released from prison and exerts a new reign of terror over the city, the choice is made for him.

Daredevil was the series that launched the Marvel/Netflix alliance back in 2015. That partnership has proved both successful and prolific in a short period of time, spanning eleven seasons in six distinct series aired in just three and a half years. Its future is in question, however, with Disney launching its own streaming service in 2019 to be spearheaded by multiple Marvel shows and Netflix recently cancelling both Luke Cage and Iron Fist.

There is, then, an excellent chance that this will be Daredevil’s swansong. That would be a shame because the third season of Daredevil, despite not hitting the heights and consistency of his debut (still the best set of episodes the Marvel/Netflix team-up has produced), is definitely a much-needed improvement after a spate of weak seasons.

The strengths of Daredevil as a series are clear: it has the best central cast of characters of the Marvel/Netflix stable, with Charlie Cox, Elden Henson and Deborah Ann Woll playing Matt, Foggy and Karen with heart and vigour. Vincent D’Onofrio continues to give a brutal, monstrous but weirdly charismatic performance as Wilson Fisk (aka Kingpin). This season also brings in new characters, most notably Jay Ali as Ray Nadeem and Wilson Bethel as Benjamin Poindexter (aka Bullseye), FBI agents trying to tap Fisk for intel on other criminals who take radically different paths based on their exposure to the mobster. Both give great performances.

The series also has exceptional fight choreography. One of the biggest disappointments of the Marvel/Netflix collaborations has been the wildly inconsistent quality of the action and fight scenes, particularly Iron Fist’s lacklustre combat. Fortunately, Daredevil is right at the other end of the spectrum, with brutal, bruising and convincingly physical fight scenes that feel real, with the participants having to rest for appreciably realistic periods between fights and every punch causing winces in the viewer.

This peaks in the fourth episode which delivers a staggering 11-minute, continuous cut shot taking in multiple fights in different locations in a prison and an intense dramatic confrontation along the way. It’s a breathtaking technical, action and acting achievement, a masterclass of choreography and acting, and is simply the finest action sequence delivered in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe (TV and film) to date. It’s certainly the highwater mark of the season.

In terms of pacing and story structure, which the Marvel Netflix shows have struggled with ever since the first season of Jessica Jones (the second season of the collaboration), Daredevil Season 3 is a mixed bag. It starts very slow, but starts picking up before the end of the second episode, and the wrapping-up of the story (which extends across the last three or so episodes) is excellent. In between there are peaks and troughs, with two flashback-heavy episodes dedicated to exploring character backstories. Neither of these flashbacks are entirely necessary and the exploration of Bullseye’s history is badly-directed, pretentious (the black and white “memory vault” format is in fact unintentionally hilarious) and makes it completely implausible that the he’d ever get a job with the FBI, given their thorough background checks. Karen Page’s flashback episode is well-acted and better-directed, but the revelation of her backstory doesn’t entirely line up with the character as she was presented in Season 1.

The issue of realism and suspension of disbelief recurs throughout the season, particularly in the middle third. Early episodes, in which it appears that Fisk is manipulating situations as they arise, are very well-handled. But the later-season revelation that Fisk in fact set many of the events of the season in motion a year or more earlier (despite being in prison), expertly playing people like puppets and setting up backups within contingencies within plans, is laughably unconvincing. This continues through an awful sequence where Fisk seems to instantaneously and magically know the identities of jurors, the whereabouts of key witnesses and every move our heroes are about to make (including information he couldn’t know without clairvoyance or psychic powers). It’s all very well giving your villain a credible threat level, but this season goes beyond this and makes Fisk lethally knowledgeable and dangerous when needed and incompetent when not. It feels contrived, which is a pity. The later part of the season, where he again has to reach to emerging threats, is better-handled.

More successful is how the season develops Matt Murdoch/Daredevil as a character, presenting him with a crisis of faith and a deeper crisis of morality before convincingly bringing him out the other side into a lighter and brighter place. The theme of the season is fear and how people can overcome it to do the right thing, and, as basic as it is, the season explores the theme through multiple character arcs in a very successful manner.

So, despite some major problems mid-season with plausibility and a couple of ropey flashback episodes, Daredevil Season 3 (****½) emerges as one of the strongest seasons from the Netflix/Marvel collaborative project, and leaves the show in a great place for a fourth season. I only hope it can survive the apparent Netflix/Marvel breakup and give us at least one more season of these characters’ adventures, as they have earned it. The season is available worldwide on Netflix now.

Update on the Marvel/Netflix TV shows

2017 was a successful year for Marvel's collaboration with Netflix. They got no less than three seasons of television on-air: Iron Fist Season 1 in March, The Defenders mini-series in August and The Punisher Season 1 in November. Each one of these shows had impressive viewing figures and cemented the success of the partnership between the two companies.

Well, it did, anyway. Disney, who own Marvel, have announced that they are launching their own streaming service in 2019 with an adult-oriented, Netflix-style channel which will feature both a Marvel TV series and a live-action Star Wars show. This has left the fate of the Netflix shows up in the air and relying very much on the contractual agreement between Marvel/Disney and Netflix. It might be that the shows will move from Netflix to the new Disney channel (not likely to be called that, for branding reasons), or that they will remain on Netflix as long as Netflix keep renewing them. It's also possible that Marvel will also buy out Netflix of any long-term contractual agreement. Netflix would probably like to keep the shows as long as possible: they have good brand awareness, they've been generally well-received and they're surprisingly cheap (at least compared to the likes of Altered Carbon and The Crown).

The long-term future of the Netflix/Marvel universe may in question, but at least in the short to medium term we know what's going on. Here is the status of the Marvelflix shows going forwards:

Jessica Jones Season 2 was filmed between April and September 2017. The season is in post-production and is likely to air in February or (if Netflix want to clear everything out of Altered Carbon's way) March 2018.

Krysten Ritter, Rachel Taylor, Carrie-Ann Moss and Eka Darville return and are joined by Leah Gibson, Janet McTeer and J.R. Ramirez as new characters. No word on the who the villain is, but David Tennant will return for flashbacks as Kilgrave.

Luke Cage Season 2 was filmed between June and November 2017. The season has only just started post-production. It seems likely to hit the August 2018 release slot.

Mike Colter, Simone Missick, Rosario Dawson, Alfre Woodard and Theo Rossi return from Season 1 and are joined by Mustafa Shakir, Gabrielle Dennis and Thomas Q. Jones. Finn Jones will also feature in a multi-episode arc teaming up Luke and Iron Fist, seen by some as a possible pilot for a future Heroes for Hire series (although logistically how this will work with the new Marvel/Disney streaming service remains to be seen), which could potentially replace both a Luke Cage and Iron Fist third season if the collaboration is well-received.

Daredevil Season 3 started filming in November 2017 and is likely to run through April 2018. This is the same filming slot for The Punisher last year, so this makes it pretty likely we'll get this in November 2018.

Charlie Cox, Deborah Ann Woll, Elden Henson, Vincent D'Onofrio return and Wilson Bethel joins the cast.

Iron Fist Season 2 starts filming in the next week or two, with shooting likely to run through May 2018. This is an unusual filming slot for a Netflix series, suggesting that Netflix may be considering getting it out on screen in December next year shortly after Daredevil, although that might be tight. More likely they will put it in the February 2019 slot. Still, getting new seasons of all four Netflix shows out in one year would be impressive.

Finn Jones and Jessica Henwick return and it is expected that Tom Pelphrey and Jessica Stroup will also return. Simone Missick is expected to cross over from Luke Cage as well, and is possible that Rosario Dawson will also cameo.

The fate of the Marvelflix universe beyond the second season of Iron Fist remains questionable (neither The Defenders nor The Punisher have been renewed yet), and it will be interesting to see if the cataclysmic events of The Avengers: Infinity War have any bearing or even be mentioned in the new seasons (given that the trailer depicts New York as a key battleground in the new movie, you'd assume that it would come up). But we have another four seasons of these shows to get through before we know for sure what's going to happen.

The Defenders: Season 1

An ancient organisation, the Hand, is causing trouble in New York City. They've already run afoul of the Devil of Hell's Kitchen and invoked the enmity of the Iron Fist. Now, with time running short and their resources dwindling, they are forced into desperate, high-profile gambits that attract the attention of not just Iron First and Daredevil, but also Luke Cage and Jessica Jones. The four defenders of New York reluctantly join forces to bring the Hand down...if they can.

The Defenders is the culmination of two and a half years of careful planning by Marvel TV and Netflix. Back in April 2015 they released the first season of Daredevil, a TV series based on one of their lower-tier heroes, rooted in defending Hell's Kitchen, New York from more mundane threats than the aliens and demigods that the likes of the Avengers have to deal with. More series followed focusing on other characters from the same milieu: Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist, as well as a second season of Daredevil. The plan was always to bring them together in a big team-up to fight a mutual threat.

The Defenders has a few jobs it needs to do. It has to be a satisfying team up for these four heroes, it has to work as a story in its own right, it has to pay off the groundwork and scene-setting down in five previous seasons of television and it has to be accessible to newcomers. It's a tall order, not helped by the gradual decline in quality of the Netflix Marvel series that preceded it, but one that it kind of pulls off.

The opening episodes of The Defenders focus on our individual heroes and the problems they are going through: Matt Murdoch has dropped the Daredevil persona and is making a go of it as a lawyer, whilst Jessica Jones is still recovering from Kilgrave's depredations and working up the confidence to go back to work. Danny Rand is searching for more information on K'un-Lun in Asia and Luke Cage has just gotten out of prison and returned home to Harlem. A surprising number of our heroes' supporting casts drop in, making these individual story strands work between in linking the mini-series to the ones that preceded it. Combined with a new storyline revolving around the Hand and one of their leaders, played with traditional charisma by Sigourney Weaver, this makes for a busy couple of opening episodes even before our heroes meet up.

When the gang does get together, the writers have fun setting up their dynamics: Matt's Catholic guilt and intensity gets little respect from the rest of the team and everyone seems to find Iron Fist kind of ridiculous. Jessica Jones gets the best lines and the best side-eye moments as she tries to work out what kind of crazy situation she's walked into, and all four lead actors seem to be having a great time.

The fight scenes are a serious step up from Iron Fist, being more dynamic and brutal, even if they don't get back to the earthy, gritty rawness of the first season of Daredevil. A few of the fight scenes also rely too obviously on CG or filming trickery to pull off having four complicated battles going on in one shot, which feels a bit gimmicky. But overall, the show competently handles its action scenes.

In terms of pacing, something that has caused almost all of the Marvel Netflix shows big problems (Luke Cage worse of all), Defenders benefits from having just eight episodes to unfold across. This makes for some breezy, fast-paced episodes (although, conversely, the best is arguably one that is mostly restricted to a Chinese restaurant and featuring our heroes talking about stuff) which come as a relief after the frantic wheel-spinning of some of the forebear series. The series even finds time to set up new dynamics: Colleen Wing, Misty Knight and Claire Temple get lots of stuff to do, hinting at a possible alternative superhero team who could take shape later on (although, given the impending Netflix/Marvel divorce, this seems less likely).

Unfortunately, the series continues to have a villain problem. Using the Hand is a bad idea, as they were boring and bland in both Daredevil and Iron Fist and are still boring and bland here. The idea of using the Hand leaders (the Fingers, appropriately) as counterpoints to our four heroes is a solid idea, especially since two of them were set up in previous Netflix shows, but it doesn't quite work as other members of the group receive little to no development. Sigourney Weaver's Alexandra is a big selling point of the series and Weaver gives a fine performance, but the character is left a little underdeveloped. More capable in the role of antagonist is Elodie Yung as Elektra, returning from the dead, but she takes quite a long time to rediscover her old mojo. It also doesn't help that the Hand's plan is murky and vague, and the stakes are never really made clear other than that bad things are going to happen to New York.

The result is a mini-series that is quite a lot of fun, and a merciful step up in quality from Daredevil Season 2, Iron Fist and Luke Cage, but one that is never in any real danger of replicating the quality of the first season of Daredevil or Jessica Jones. It really needs better villains and a clearer set of stakes and goals. But as it stands, The Defenders (****) works absolutely fine as a fun action series. It is available to watch on Netflix right now.

Trailers: THE DEFENDERS and THE DARK TOWER

A couple of big trailers rolled out today. First up is the trailer for The Defenders, the Netflix/Marvel series which teams up Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist to take on a threat led by Sigourney Weaver.

The Defenders his Netflix on 18 August this year.

Next up is The Dark Tower, a film based on Stephen King's novel series of the same name. The film is both an adaptation of and a sequel to King's novels. If successful, it will be followed by a sequel and a spin-off, prequel TV series.

The Dark Tower is released in cinemas on 4 August this year.

Netflix greenlights PUNISHER TV series

Netflix has greenlit a TV series of The Punisher. Spinning off from the second season of Daredevil, The Punisher will be Netflix's sixth TV series based on characters from Marvel Comics (following on from Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and The Defenders) and will see Jon Bernthal reprising his critically-acclaimed role as Frank Castle.

Steve Lightfoot, who worked on Hannibal as a writer and producer, will produce, showrun and co-write the new series.

Based on Netflix's scheduling and the lead time for their projects, it's unlikely we will see the first season of The Punisher until late 2017 or early 2018.

Daredevil: Season 2

Wilson Fisk is in jail and the several criminal organisations he brought together in Hell's Kitchen have been defeated. But the Daredevil's work is not over, as new criminal gangs arise to take their place. More dangerously, a new player is in town, a vigilante who solves problems with heavy weapons and utter ruthlessness. Daredevil has to defeat the games, neutralise the threat of "The Punisher" and deal with an old flame who is back in town with her own agenda.

Daredevil's first season was an excellent slice of television drama, a serious-minded show that grounded the superhero elements in the dirt and back-alleys of New York City and focused on the villain's magnificent characterisation as much as on the hero's development. It also featured brilliantly-realised side-characters, uniformly excellent acting and some really interesting direction. Netflix and Marvel proved a winning combination, and proved it again with the superb Jessica Jones a few months later.

The second season of Daredevil is, unfortunately, somewhat less accomplished. Many of the creative leads on the first season have departed, the show's most riveting villain is behind bars and Matt Murdock's evolution into Daredevil is complete. What more is there to tell?

As it turns out, an interesting amount. Marvel has struggled bringing the Punisher to the big screen, despite several brave attempts. Introducing him on Daredevil is a move that works well. Jon Bernthal (late of The Walking Dead) plays the character to the hilt, bringing gravitas and the required brutality to the role. He's also a good actor, given a chance to shine on Daredevil that he wasn't on The Walking Dead. Several scenes featuring the Punisher stand out from the season, but a quiet moment of reflection in a graveyard may be his best. Elodie Yung is also good as Elektra, although her arc is a little less compelling due to the plot overload that begins to strain the season towards the end.

The second season of Daredevil is divided into several sub-arcs, a good move designed to combat the strain that both the first season and also Jessica Jones suffered in trying to drag one story out across thirteen episodes. In the first four episodes, the focus is on Punisher and his apprehension. Then the focus moves to his trial, with both Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) and Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) having to step up as Murdock (Charlie Cox) is distracted by Elektra's return. Enjoyably, the consequences of Murdock's double life and his inability to do everything are played out in full, to Nelson and Page's anger. Nelson and Page were the heart and soul of the first season and are even better in the second, Nelson's rise to becoming a respected, effective attorney and Page's transition from secretary to investigator to journalist playing out convincingly (her sort-of romance with Murdock is more tedious). There's also some good backstory developments and flashback storylines.

The season reaches its high-point with a three-episode arc set in prison which is absolutely riveting, driven by some fantastic performances and some beautifully-written, terrifying dialogue.

The last few episodes of the season are less accomplished. The season has a big problem in that it has no real continuing villain. A few minor bad guys show up and are dispatched pretty quickly, and the return of a Season 1 minor villain is underwhelming. The Hand, effectively an army of ninjas, start out as being vaguely intriguing but degenerate into pantomime. They never show up in numbers of less than a million (it feels), resulting in lots of really tedious fistfights. Also, despite being stealth ninjas able to totally avoid New York City's law enforcement agencies, they get beaten up by a blind man rather easily. When Stick, Murdock's mentor from Season 1, shows up for no real reason it's hard to really care. The final few episodes are still worth watching for the storylines of Nelson, Page and the Punisher, as Daredevil, Elektra and Stick's story becomes vague and forgettable.

Still, if the second season is weaker than the first it's still a highly enjoyable series to watch. The late-season action scenes become boring, but there's two action sequences earlier on (one in a stairwell and one in a prison corridor) which are genuinely breathtaking. There's some good dialogue and twists, and introducing the Punisher like this is a ballsy move which succeeds brilliantly. If Daredevil's second season (****) falters compared to the first, it's certainly not a fatal issue and hopefully the third season will improve upon it. The second season of Daredevil is available now on Netflix.

Finn Jones cast in lead role in Netflix's IRON FIST TV series

Netflix have cast Game of Thrones actor Finn Jones (Ser Loras Tyrell) in their upcoming Iron Fist TV show. This is the fourth of six TV series they have planned with Marvel, following Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage, with The Defenders and possibly The Punisher to follow.

Jones will be playing Danny Rand, a New York kid trained up in supernatural martial arts in a mysterious city. He returns to New York to fight crime, and presumably team up with Luke, Jessica and Daredevil at some future point.

The series, which will be run by former Six Feet Under producer Scott Buck, is expected to enter production in the summer to air in very late 2016 or early 2017. The second season of Daredevil airs next month, and a second season of Jessica Jones is expected to start production imminently to air around November. Luke Cage's first season just wrapped shooting and is expected to air in the summer.

JESSICA JONES renewed for a second season

Marvel and Netflix have confirmed that Jessica Jones will be returning for a second season. The show, part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, was released on 20 November 2015 and attracted widespread critical acclaim for its writing, acting, direction and unusually mature way of dealing with adult themes in a superhero setting.

Jessica Jones is the second of five shows Netflix and Marvel are developing. Daredevil already aired its first season at the start of the year, and its second season will be released this March. The first season of Luke Cage will debut later this year. Iron Fist will likely debut next year, with the key characters from all four shows then joining forces in a Defenders mini-series, likely in 2018.

Netflix and Marvel have also indicated they are looking at expanding their series roster with a new series based on The Punisher. The infamous Marvel anti-hero has been featured in several films but nonve of them have really taken off. However, Netflix and Marvel are excited about the character starring in the second season of Daredevil, where he will be played by The Walking Dead's Jon Bernthal, and are actively discussing a new series featuring him. Whether the Punisher would then play a role in the Defenders TV series or would be completely unrelated is unclear.

Netflix and Marvel have previously hinted that Ghost Rider and Blade TV series could also be in in development, the latter possibly with the involvement of Wesley Snipes (who played the character in three films). However, so far those two series remain unconfirmed.

An airdate for the second season of Jessica Jones has not been announced, but assuming it starts filming in March or April, it could be released in November as with last year.

Daredevil: Season 1

Hell's Kitchen, New York City. A shadowy property magnate is buying up crumbling tenements, dreaming of a "better tomorrow" for the city, but at the cost of people who have lived there for decades. Two hotshot lawyers decline a massive salary from a prestigious firm to set up their own independent practice and soon find themselves mired in corruption scandals and being asked to defend murderers. And, in the back alleys and drug dens, a masked vigilante is bringing his own brand of justice to the streets, one criminal at a time.

Daredevil is a fresh take on the Marvel Comics character, completely unrelated to the 2003 Ben Affleck film, although (obviously) sharing the same basic premise. Matt Murdock (played with quiet charisma by Charlie Cox) is a young man who was blinded as a child by a toxic chemical spill. Although he can't see as other people can, the chemicals have given him a sort of visual "sonar" which allows him to detect people around him. He becomes an attorney at law, but despairs of the crime and corruption he sees infesting his home neighbourhood of Hell's Kitchen. Having been trained in martial arts by a sensei as a child, he renews these skills and embarks on a one-man vigilante spree at night. However, his actions soon attract the interest of the media, the criminal gangs that control the area and he finds keeping his double life secret from his friends increasingly difficult.

So far, so standard. But where Daredevil succeeds is that it adopts a convincing cinematographic style that puts the camera and the viewer in the heart of the action. The fight scenes are spectacularly well-choreographed and acknowledge the fact that actually punching someone once usually isn't enough to render them unconscious. The series also accepts that the human body can only take so much punishment, and Murdock is frequently seen spending days recovering from a brutal fight before he can go back into action again. Having a superhero series which dwells on the fragility of its central character is unusual but this works unexpectedly well, emphasising Murdock's bravery - or stupidity - when he heads out to fight again.

The other thing Daredevil throws into the mix is the idea of the villain as an antagonist deserving of his own story arc and character development. It's four episodes before we finally meet crime lord Wilson "Kingpin" Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio) but when we do, he rapidly becomes as important and compelling a character. We follow him as he develops his criminal enterprise, apparently with the beneficial aim of helping revitalise the city, and also falls in love with an art gallery owner, Vanessa Marianna (Ayelet Zurer). It takes a few episodes before Kingpin's fully monstrous side to come to the fore, as the show instead tries to show how he came to be who he is. Elaborate flashback episodes reveal Kingpin's childhood under an abusive father, whilst also filling in the backstory to Matt's accident, his upbringing by his father and later a martial arts expert, and how he and his partner Fogger Nelson (Elden Henson) met.

Other characters are also very well developed, with Deborah Ann Woll particularly excelling as Karen Page. Woll spent seven seasons on True Blood as reluctant vampire Jessica, where early interesting character development was undone by that show's descent into outright insanity by its midway point. Here Woll gets a lot more to do as Karen evolves from crime victim to legal secretary to self-motivated investigative agent. Toby Leonard Moore also gives a terrific performance as James Wesley, Fisk's right-hand man whose ice-cool professionalism masks an abiding loyalty to his employer.

The series takes advantage of its freedom as 13-episode show guaranteed to go the distance before being written. This is less of a procedural as a mini-series, one story unfolding over thirteen hours which takes full advantage of that running time to delve deep into the characters whilst also providing compelling action sequences, thematic musings on the nature of heroism and villainy and not being afraid to get experimental. In one episode it benches Murdock for most of the hour after a particularly bad beating to explore his childhood. In another, Foggy Nelson takes centre stage and he convincingly evolves away from mere comic sidekick to a fully-realised and capable lawyer in his own right. The show even has time to muse on the gentrification of New York and the good points and bad points about it, and on the changing nature of journalism. Almost preposterously, Daredevil's subplot about news reporter Ben Urich (Vondie Curtis-Hall) and his work at The New York Bulletin does a better job of discussing the evolving nature of news media than the final season of The Wire. The season also works as an extended origin story, bringing the elements of the Daredevil character and mythos together slowly rather than just by the end of the first hour.

Daredevil's biggest success is shifting the tone and atmosphere of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to something more serious, better-characterised, more grounded and far more interesting. It's helped by being shaped by a trio of writers who cut their teeth with Joss Whedon on Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Drew Goddard, Steven S. DeKnight and Doug Petrie - who have since gone on to work on other projects including Cloverfield, The Martian, Spartacus and American Horror Story. Their experience shows immensely in this well-crafted, ambitious, darkly-humoured and at times startlingly well-written drama series which makes you believe that a blind man can fight crime on the streets of New York City and prosper.

The first season of Daredevil (****½) is the best slice of the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far (note: I have not yet seen Jessica Jones) and may just the be the greatest superhero TV show to date, whilst also often working far beyond those narrow genre confines. It is available now on Netflix and will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray in 2016.