Extraordinary review: You’ll be powerless not to laugh at this zinger
Extraordinary rating: Four stars
Jen (Máiréad Tyers) is dismayed at being the only person in the world who didn’t gain a superpower when she turned 18 in Extraordinary
Probably every child ever born has at one time or another fantasised about having a superpower. But which superpower would it be?
Flying? Invisibility? Mind-reading? Superspeed? X-ray vision? Time travel? Seeing into the future?
It’s a safe bet to say no one would choose the power of “just being yourself”. When someone suggests to Jen, the hapless protagonist of sparkling new comedy series Extraordinary ( Disney+), that perhaps “just being yourself” is her superpower, she tells them: “That’s the dumbest f***ing thing I’ve ever heard.”
You can’t blame her, really. Poor Jen, appealingly played by Máiréad Tyers, who was in Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast and surely has a glittering career ahead of her, has been dealt a lousy hand.
The superpowers bestowed on the characters are hilariously random, ranging from the really impressive to the totally naff.
In a world where everyone develops a superpower either on or shortly after they turn 18, Jen, now 25, is still waiting for something to happen.
To make matters worse, her younger and extremely annoying half-sister Andy (Safia Oakley-Green) has no sooner blown out all the candles on her 18th birthday cake than she’s showing off her newly acquired super-strength by pulling the door off the fridge and lifting the sofa with one hand.
The premise of Extraordinary is not exactly original. It’s been used numerous times in books and movies, including Disney’s own 2021 animated feature Encanto, which was aimed at a family audience — something this is very much not.
But it’s what writer Emma Moran, making her full-series debut after contributing material to Have I Got News For You, does with the idea that counts.
The superpowers bestowed on the characters are hilariously random, ranging from the really impressive to the totally naff.
Jen’s mother Mary (Siobhán McSweeney, wonderful as usual) has the power to control technology. It’s a pity, then, that she hasn’t the first clue how technology actually works and can’t even manage to successfully change TV channels with the remote.Jen has a lousy job in a party shop owned by a woman in her 50s whose superpower is... looking like a 12-year-old. Forever.
There’s a dentist whose next-to-useless superpower is giving people their own individual soundtracks, which they can hear.
So when the nervous Jen walks in for an appointment, she’s assailed by ominous strings straight out of a horror film.
Jen shares a London flat with best pal Carrie (Sofia Oxenham) and Carrie’s lazy boyfriend Kash (Bilal Hasna). Carrie has the power to channel the dead, which comes in handy when the legal firm she works for has to get in contact with a deceased client whose last will and testament is being disputed.
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Mostly, though, Carrie uses it for fun, like summoning Adolf Hitler, just so Jen and Kash can mock him. That said, her gift leads to a wholly unexpected — and unexpectedly moving — twist in episode one.
Kash can turn back time, but only by a few measly minutes. Nonetheless, fancying himself as a masked vigilante, he knocks up a costume with “Super Clock” emblazoned across the chest. The trouble is the letter L keeps peeling off. Look, I said it was funny, I never said the humour was always sophisticated.
They unexpectedly acquire a fourth flatmate when the stray cat Jen takes in (and which Kash names Jizzlord) turns out to be an amnesiac shape-shifter (Luke Rollason), who’s apparently been stuck in feline form for three years.
Jen, who’s on the rebound from the flaky Luke (Ned Porteous), a somewhat smug git who literally flew out the window after they had sex (you wouldn’t catch Superman treating Lois Lane like that!), has a date with a nerdy-looking bloke who can give a person an orgasm just by touching them.
He explains that he discovered this gift when he shook his previously estranged father’s hand just after turning 18.
To Jen’s dismay, though, he insists on wearing rubber gloves and holding cling film between them when they kiss.
I watched the first two episodes of Extraordinary (there are eight in all) and even though the second is a little more loosely structured and includes an odd, misfiring joke about the IRA, it’s still terrific fun.
Moran keeps the zingers flying throughout, leading to plenty of supercharged laugh-out-loud moments.
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