Arrow

Venerable DC superhero Green Arrow—created in 1941 and derided early on as a Batman analog, though later reinvented as a champion of progressive causes—gets the CW treatment in this frosh series, starring Stephen Amell as Oliver Queen, a licentious billionaire transformed after a yachting accident kills his father and leaves Oliver himself stranded on an island for five years. Now a crackerjack bowman, Queen sets out to fulfill his father’s dying wish: to “bring down those who are poisoning my city” (very modern, the new Arrow zeroes in on white-collar crooks). Simultaneously, Queen copes with a fractured family, a betrayed ex-girlfriend, and a cop obsessed with putting the vigilante superhero behind bars. The Arrow pilot was dubbed a “darkly gleaming gem” by the Philadelphia Inquirer; some critics even evoked comparisons to Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. Wrote the Los Angeles Times: “Smooth without being slick, textured but not self-indulgent, Arrow reminds us that the best stories we tell are both revelatory and a whole lot of fun to watch.”

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