The Boys Tv series

Recently, my Facebook feed was suddenly full of friends talking about how great The Boys was on Amazon Prime. It was a good call because the show is absolutely brilliant. End of review.

Ok, maybe a little more info is required. The Boys is based on the comics written by Garth Ennis. That was reason enough to watch it for me as I grew up reading Judge Dredd and 2000AD, and am a huge fan of Preacher (also a great TV show). The story follows a guy called Hughie Campbell, who is recruited into a vigilante group known as The Boys, and a super-powered girl called Annie January who joins a group known as the Seven. The head of The Boys is a guy called Billy Butcher, played absolutely superbly by Karl Urban. The Seven, who are basically caricatures of the Justice League, are paid by a company called Vought, who basically treat them as celebrities.

The big twist here is that the Seven, and other superheroes in general, are mostly dickheads. The exception is Annie, aka Starlight, who is nice and genuine. It is her and Hughie’s interactions with their own groups that show the flaws of each. And they are all seriously flawed.

I really, really enjoyed The Boys. If you like superheroes and comics and so on, you probably will too. If you don’t like a ton of violence and a shit load of swearing, then it is probably best avoided. It is violent with a lot of very dark humour. I won’t talk about it too much as pretty much anything I say will be a spoiler. The Boys season one is on Amazon Prime. If you are on the fence, there is a trailer below that will give you a great taste of what to expect. If you are teetering toward watching the show, just watch the show. My problem with the trailer is that it shows a bit too much, but maybe that is just hindsight.

The Boys has already started filming season 2. It is going to be a long wait. In the meantime – I just bought the comics. Here, if you must, is the trailer: