Family holidays are like DIY perms: they seem like a good idea at the time. Surly teenaged kids would rather be seen dead than spend time with their parents, who, in turn, end up bringing all of their domestic issues away with them.
The Powells are a textbook example of the disgruntled, disconnected Californian family - until their plane nosedives into a lake in Brazil.
Having survived the crash, Jim (Michael Chiklis; The Shield) and Stephanie Powell (Julie Benz; Dexter), and their children Daphne and JJ, begin to realise they are No Ordinary Family (TVB Pearl, Thursdays at 10.35pm), in this brand new American sci-fi dramedy.
Jim is a mild-mannered police sketch artist married to a successful research scientist. Their generation Y children deal with typical high-school woes - JJ struggles with bad grades; Daphne with boy problems. Before their near-death experience, Jim's biggest issue was the growing distance between him, his wife and their children.
After the ordeal, he's presented with a new conundrum - and world of possibility - when superhuman reflexes kick in during a shooting at the police station where he works. One by one, the rest of the Powells discover powers that throw a wrench into everything they thought they knew about themselves and each other.
It's always fun playing realistic family dynamics against the fantasy of extraordinary abilities and No Ordinary Family takes care to lay down convincing relationships between its characters even as their awesome superpowers kick in. We would have been content to stay focused on the Powells as they work through stuff: Jim flirts with the idea of using his super-strength for vigilantism; Stephanie tries to use her super-speed to make up for lost time with her children; Daphne just wants to shut out the painful truth about her telepathy; and JJ finds an unexpected downside to his new- found super-brain.
All too soon, however, the plot thickens and the Powells realise they are not alone in their abilities. Let's just hope the series doesn't end up bloating its universe with too many supers, like that sinking mess Heroes, and stays bubbly a la The Incredibles.
