The newest import to set everyone’s hair on end in Britain is Heroes (BBC2, Wednesday, 9pm). Heroes is a dark lit TV drama that makes me want to say things like ‘noir’ and ‘brooding’ (don’t have a go! This show made the RT say “piquant”). Many shows that bleed this kind of blackness are often trying too hard. So desperate are they to show their credibility that they forget that people have to actually watch it and fill our heads with needless camera trickery and baffling plot devices. The only time something truly dark has worked was Ghost Squad which was shown on Channel 4 a year or so ago (any chance of a new series C4?).

And now, maybe… just maybe… Heroes is going to as credible as it is successful. Watching it last night, it seems that Heroes is trying to retain some of the mystery of something like Lost without having the ‘why is all this happening and please hurry up’ element. Heroes is fast paced and slick without giving too much away. This certainly seems to be working as the viewing figures have been decent and people keep coming back to it.

Last night’s showing was called Six Months Ago… most of you have probably already seen it a million times as sci-fi fans don’t mind the odd illegal download… which, naturally, went back in time. Until now, we’d seen our heroes aware of their powers but in a great little U-turn, we flash back to a time when the characters didn’t know they were heroes at all.

With this, we saw the slow unfurling of their powers. Naturally, this meant close ups on the faces of our protagonists all screwed up and puzzled. Claire (not yet a cheerleader) gets a nasty gash on her hand which heals super-quick. How… how could this… be? Hiro meanwhile finds himself in that strange diner with the doomed waitress.

Funnily enough, all these stories are linked by two blokes. One who looks like Alan Yentob (otherwise known as Chandra Suresh – Mohinder’s dad) and Claire’s dad (HRG) who looks like Sean Lock. They are seemingly on a quest to find all the people in the world with super powers… or… those who are more evolved. It’s all good stuff designed to drag you in.

The previous nine episodes have shown us enough, but this look back makes the journey all the more engrossing. Aside from all that, the most important development was the revealing of the mysterious, murderous Sylar. Sylar, or Gabriel Gray to his mum, is a watchmaker who seemingly always hoped to be special. He is approached by Chandra Suresh and told that he might have super-powers and naturally, Gabriel is hopeful that he is. Chandra’s tests deduce that he really isn’t special enough. Chandra the decides to move on to the next person on his list (of people he thinks own super powers).

Gabriel then used info from Chandra’s notes to find the name and address of Brian Davis and soon finds out that Davis has special telekinetic powers. Introducing himself as “Sylar” (a pseudonym derived from the brand of watch) he states that Davis is “broken”, then brutally murders by smacking him over the head with a giant crystal. The snippet of next weeks show implies that Sylar has stolen Davis’ powers. Ladies and gents, a super-villain is born.

With a little effort from me, this could be one of the shows of the year. Heroes isn’t immediately engrossing, but on the face of things, seems to have enough to stick the hooks in. It’s probably the classiest sci-fi show that’s been on for some time. Not being a fan of the genre, this show seems to have huge crossover potential and if it carries on at this rate, we’ll have a show ready to take over the world all by itself.