Television series

The Boys

A pitch-black superhero satire where the capes are corporate product and the good guys are furious, broke, and outgunned. It's gory, profane, unexpectedly moving in places, and never lets you forget that unchecked power plus mass adoration is a recipe for monsters. For anyone who's ever side-eyed a billionaire's smile.

TVMaze rating8.3

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Invincible2021

Animated but every bit as brutal and morally messy, this follows a teenager discovering his superhero father is not the hero the world thinks he is. Shocking violence, real heart.

But The animation might read as 'kids' show' to some, which makes the sudden extreme gore even more jarring.

Invincible poster

Watchmen2019

A sequel-of-sorts to the original comic that reckons with American racism, vigilantism, and inherited trauma. Same DNA as The Boys - power dissected, not celebrated - but far angrier and stranger.

But Dense with lore and history; if you haven't read the comic or watched the 2009 film, some of it may feel opaque.

Watchmen poster

Preacher2016

From the same comic writer as The Boys, Garth Ennis, this is blasphemous, gross, hilarious, and weirdly sincere about faith and violence. If you love the tone, this is the source well.

But It sprawls and gets weirder every season, with pacing that tests patience even by Ennis standards.

Preacher poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

A Face in the Crowd1957

Homelander is this film's Lonesome Rhodes with superpowers - a manufactured celebrity who believes his own myth and turns on the machine that built him. Made six decades before capes were the metaphor of choice.

A drifter is turned into a folksy TV demagogue by cynical handlers who discover, too late, that the monster they built loves the adulation more than them. Ferociously prescient.

But Black and white, stagey by modern standards, and its satire is delivered with 1950s bluntness rather than gore or spectacle.

A Face in the Crowd poster
More like this (8)

Kick-Ass2010

An amateur superhero movie that takes the 'what would actually happen' premise and runs it through splatter-comedy, with a foul-mouthed pre-teen assassin stealing the whole thing.

But Its shock value has aged into something more mean-spirited than subversive for some viewers now.

Kick-Ass poster

Deadpool2016

Superhero satire played for laughs rather than horror, with a mercenary mouth and a genuine soft centre underneath the fourth-wall gags and ultraviolence.

But It's far more jokey and self-aware than cynical - less interested in indicting the genre than winking at it.

Deadpool poster

Peacemaker2022no page yet

James Gunn takes a DC also-ran and builds a surprisingly tender show about a violent idiot trying to be less of one, stuffed with needle drops and gore.

But The tonal whiplash between slapstick and sincerity doesn't land for everyone, and the DC continuity baggage can distract.

The Umbrella Academy2019

A dysfunctional superhero family saves (and nearly destroys) the world repeatedly, with time travel, needle-drops, and genuine sibling ache under the spectacle.

But Considerably softer and stranger than The Boys - more melancholic family dramedy than satire of celebrity and corporate power.

The Umbrella Academy poster

Doom Patrol2019

The weirdest superhero team on television, built from broken, humiliated people rather than gods, with genuine pathos hiding inside its absurdist gross-out plots.

But Its go-for-broke strangeness (a sentient street, a talking donkey) is a real barrier for viewers wanting something grounded.

Doom Patrol poster

Gen V2023no page yet

The Boys' own spin-off, moving the satire to a superhero college and finding fresh, ugly things to say about ambition, hierarchy, and what fame does to kids.

But It leans on Boys mythology and needs that context; as a stand-alone it's noticeably thinner.

Chernobyl2019

Swap Vought's PR department for the Soviet state and you have the same engine as The Boys: a system that will sacrifice anyone to protect the story it tells about itself. Same target, dead serious register, zero jokes.

A miniseries about a catastrophe caused less by the explosion than by the institution that lied about it afterward, told with rigorous, devastating restraint.

But There is no wit here, no comic relief - it is grim, slow-burning, and entirely humourless by design.

Chernobyl poster

Nightcrawler2014

Strip Homelander of the cape and the lasers and you get Lou Bloom - a hollow man performing empathy flawlessly while climbing over bodies. Same character engine, no superpowers, no jokes, all dread.

A chilling character study of a man who studies human warmth like a foreign language and weaponises it for career advancement, filmed with cold, gorgeous menace.

But It's a slow, queasy character piece with no action set-pieces and almost no relief from its central sociopath's point of view.

Nightcrawler poster

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