Net­flix brings an appro­pri­ate­ly weird adap­ta­tion of The Umbrel­la Acad­e­my to life

Based on a com­ic by Ger­ard Way (yes, that Ger­ard Way) and Gabriel Ba which has been described as ​‘X‑Men meets The Roy­al Tenen­baums’, The Umbrel­la Academy’s great­est strength is how it keeps its focus on abu­sive parental rela­tion­ships and child­hood trau­ma, and how that dam­age can last into adult­hood. Only here, the adults in ques­tion either talk to the dead, or have been per­ma­nent­ly altered by the exper­i­ments of a mad sci­en­tist, and have a kind­ly chim­panzee but­ler named Pogo.

Showrun­ner Steve Black­man and writer Jere­my Slater treat the com­ic as a jump­ing off point rather than an untouch­able holy text, as they change up some of these rela­tion­ships, move the sto­ry to the present day and merge the events and char­ac­ters of two books into one sto­ry­line that’ll keep every­one guess­ing, rather than a sim­ple page-to-screen adaptation.

Plucked from dif­fer­ent back­grounds by the world-renowned sci­en­tist Sir Regi­nald Har­greeves (Colm Feo­re) after all being born at the same time in dif­fer­ent loca­tions across the world, the chil­dren of the Umbrel­la Acad­e­my are trained from a young age to be super­heroes at vary­ing degrees of cru­el­ty; their sib­ling rela­tion­ships are dam­aged almost beyond repair by these shared expe­ri­ences. Their trau­mas basi­cal­ly go hand-in-hand with their pow­ers, with the excep­tion of Vanya (Ellen Page), whose inse­cu­ri­ty and depres­sion comes from her lack of pow­ers and her con­stant exclu­sion from the team.

Per­haps the most impor­tant diver­sion from the com­ic is how, instead of front-load­ing the back­sto­ry of the eclec­tic, dys­func­tion­al team, the show starts with their adult lives, work­ing back­wards with reg­u­lar flash­backs. It gives the impres­sion that they’re con­stant­ly liv­ing in these mem­o­ries, and the struc­ture does well to break up the show and keep things from get­ting too sta­t­ic – after all, it’s the sto­ry of a dis­band­ed super­hero team who reunite at the funer­al of their adop­tive father.

But things soon get very inter­est­ing as Num­ber 5 (Aidan Gal­lagher), a team mem­ber thought long lost, returns from the future with a prophe­cy of apoc­a­lyp­tic impli­ca­tions – more specif­i­cal­ly, that they have eight days to save the world.

The first few episodes makes the most of the baroque sets, shoot­ing them with a car­toon­ish, tongue-in-cheek sen­si­bil­i­ty. The house of the Umbrel­la Acad­e­my itself is hand­i­ly the most inter­est­ing loca­tion, pep­pered with the strange knick-knacks of a mad sci­en­tist and plen­ty of even stranger visu­al jokes (such as edu­ca­tion­al dia­grams on how best to stab some­one). There’s per­haps a bit of a clash between the dark, pres­tige TV aes­thet­ic and the show’s genre trap­pings, but the mix­ture of play­ful­ness with the macabre does a lot to keep the show feel­ing like just anoth­er super­hero story.

While some ele­ments are toned down, like­ly out of neces­si­ty (there’s no sign of Zom­bie Gus­tav Eif­fel… yet), the Umbrel­la Acad­e­my still feels in keep­ing with the spir­it of the com­ic and like a fresh alter­na­tive take on the super­hero, leav­ing plen­ty of hints at bread­crumbs at devel­op­ments bound to delight fans and new­com­ers. There are plen­ty of wild sur­pris­es wait­ing in store for those unfa­mil­iar with the com­ic, but plen­ty of enjoy­ment to be found for those who have read it. It’ll be excit­ing to see just how much of Way’s crazi­ness makes it to the show intact.

The Umbrel­la Acad­e­my arrives on Net­flix on 15 February.