The much heralded SF blockbuster opened this evening with Mohinder Suresh lecturing his students about the increasing incidence of genetic change in the human genome and the exciting possibilities that these changes would open up for humanity. As he spoke of the possible, we were being introduced to the definite. A cheerleader with amazing healing powers; a policeman who can hear thoughts; an artist who can paint the future; an office worker who can bend space and time. And the Petrelli brothers – Peter and Nathan. What can they do?

This double-hander introduced many of the major characters that you will get to know and love over the coming weeks, and hopefully gave you a flavour of what we’ve been banging on about at TV Scoop for some months. The two episodes dropped enticing clues to early story arcs as well as (literally) painting a picture of the ultimate and overriding thread: the nuclear end of the line for New York City.

Peter Petrelli is a mystery at the start of the show. He dreams he can fly and yet when tries, he falls. Until his brother Nathan flies up to save him. Nathan’s position – he’s running for the Senate and hence at the mercy of the polls – means he must appear interested in only one type of flying: high flying. Anything else must be kept under wraps, denied, unspoken even with his closest family. But Peter wants to talk about what’s happening to him. He wants answers. Only one other clue to his true ability is offered to us. He can fly when his brother is around, and after a visit to provide medical help to Isaac Mendez, he sketches a scene of a man walking across the air towards another man. A scene that he will himself appear in shortly after.

Isaac Mendez is a gifted artist whose gift increases exponentially under the influence of heroin. He paints a bus bomb three weeks before it appears in the news. He paints the train wreck where Claire Bennet will eventually save a man’s life. And he paints the adventures of Hiro Nakamura as a comic strip, weeks before they actually happen. Isaac lives on the edge of his addiction and tonight, overdosing, he paints his most frightening image – a nuclear explosion that will raze New York.

The characters’ lives interwine in ways even more complex than the map of “special” people created by Mohinder’s father, whose theory of genetic change and the abilities that would engender is being proven right before our eyes. Chandra Suresh was hounded to his death by a mysterious bespectacled man who turns out to be the adoptive father of Claire Bennet the indestructible cheerleader. But being physically super-resilient doesn’t help Claire cope with the cut and thrust of high-school politics, territorial friendships and rivalries. That requires resilience of an altogether different sort, and loyalty to true friends that comes with a high price.

Hiro appears initially to be an excitable buffoon. Nerdily enthralled by the prospect of being able to act like a character from Star Trek, his abilities grow from being able to reverse time by one second in his office, to being able to teleport himself several thousand miles across the planet and five weeks into the future, where he seeks out the author of the comic strip in which his life is playing out. Entering the studio of “Mystery Sack” he finds the artist with his cranium cut open and his brain missing just before the police descend on him. During their brief questioning he learns he has been “missing” for five weeks, but there’s no time to learn more as the nuclear blast wave heads his way and he has to teleport back to his starting place on the Tokyo subway before he’s fried to a cinder.

Opened craniums are at risk of becoming a fashion accessory as we’re introduced to Matt Parkman – a regular cop it seems, attending a very irregular homicide scene: another headless corpse, together with one that looks like a refugee from Carrie. What’s irregular about Parkman is that he can hear the frightened thoughts of the victim’s daughter, hiding in the cupboard under the stairs. He also overhears the detectives speculating about the murder being the work of Sylar. This knowledge is available only to a select few, so spilling it to one of the detectives leads to Parkman’s arrest as a suspect.

Niki Hawkins makes ends meet working as an Internet stripper, but she’s in debt to the mob (in the shape of the mysterious Mr Lindemann, who will become less ephemeral as the series progresses) and they’re out for payment one way or another. What Niki doesn’t understand is why she keeps blacking out, and exactly what happens while she’s “away.” Gory evidence of the kind of thing that can happen greets her on her awakening from what started off as an intimidating encounter with two mobsters who hoped they were in for a private show. It looks like they were the ones to be intimidated – to death. And in the mirror, the mysterious woman (who looks exactly like Niki except that she knows what’s going on) smiles quietly to herself.

Nine characters, nine stories, multiple interactions. The web of their lives will be spun together ever more closely in the coming weeks as the threat of the nuclear holocaust becomes clearer and the heroes fight to stop it before the madness of Sylar can stop them.

BBC Two Heroes website
NBC official Heroes website

Heroes: BBC Two, Wednesdays, 9pm (21 further episodes)