Just finished the Netflix show, “The Umbrella Academy.”
What a wild, wonderful trip it is, and if you haven’t already binged it, you need to do so immediately.
Based on the graphic novels of Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba, the show is funny, exciting, sweet and surprisingly moving.
If you’ve never heard of “The Umbrella Academy,” it’s about a group of young people with extraordinary abilities, pushed into becoming heroes by their overbearing father, who is something more than he seems.
The thrust of the Netflix show is that the now grownup kids are dysfunctional adults who don’t much like one another, brought together by the mysterious death of their father and, oh, maybe try to stop the apocalypse. If they can work together as a team again.
The acting performances are solid, but everyone is outshined by Robert Sheehan, who plays a drug addled Klaus, whose power is that he speaks to the dead. Sheehan’s performance is off the charts, by turns pathetic, energetic, lost, and heartbreaking.
I often wonder why America can’t make the same sort of tight, well-acted, exciting mini-series like those turned out by European countries.
Well, “The Umbrella Academy” certainly measures up.
Can’t give it enough praise. Watch it. You won’t regret it.
E.E. Williams, Author 