Marvel’s Daredevil (Season 1) – TV Show Review [spoiler-free]

Characters:
Matthew Murdock/Daredevil (Charlie Cox)
Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson)
Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll)
Ben Urich (Vondie Curtis-Hall)
Claire (Rosario Dawson)
James Wesley (Tobey Leonard Moore)
Wilson Fisk/The Kingpin [never actually referred to as The Kingpin] (Vincent D’Onofrio)

Oh. My. Goodness. 

At the end of the day, behind all closed doors and atop the hierarchy, this is a Disney property. Disney approved of this. And I can’t be more grateful that they did.

Daredevil is a Netflix original show, based on a Marvel property, that does indeed tie in to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I am going to keep this review spoiler-free, because if anyone hasn’t seen this show yet, you have to watch it now. And I cannot stress that enough. It’s so unbelievably good. I am trying to dig and claw and find faults in it, but there is no point trying to. 

This is my first real time review. What I mean is, this is my first review that I am doing immediately after I experienced what the review is about, rather than something that I first experienced at an earlier time. I finished this show last night, and couldn’t sleep very much because I just had to review this. 

I heard a lot about this show before watching it, so naturally it was one of the first things I watched on Netflix. And people weren’t lying to me. 

The show follows Matthew Murdock, a man blinded as a child, who has developed supernatural abilities and amplified his other senses. He is a skilled lawyer by day, running his firm Nelson and Murdock, with his best friend from college, and a vigilante who uses these powers to help people by night. 

If this show wasn’t on Netflix, it couldn’t have been what it is. What I’m saying is, Netflix allows the show to display anything it wants to. Even though this is rated 16+, if this was made for a television channel, some of the things wouldn’t have been approved of. I’m not a fan of censorship, or altering something just because it might offend some people. I believe any art should be displayed at its fullest, and what the artist intends it to be, not what anyone else wants. It might not make everyone happy, but it’s what the artist is creating, so it needs to be whatever that artist wants it to be. This show will offend some people. Anyone letting their little children watch this will be angry because of the gore and how gritty it is. Some followers of the Christian faith will demean this show for encouraging the path of the Devil (that isn’t a spoiler, it’s actually something to do with the very first scene of the first episode). I mean, the title sequence in every episode would certainly piss some people off.
Look, I’m not saying that those people are wrong to have opinions. What I’m saying is that an artist should never need to compromise because of other people’s demands. And Netflix is a platform that allows the artist’s true brainchild to be on display. 

Because of everything I mentioned above, this show is as close to perfect as I think it can be. If said censorship was in place, it wouldn’t have been able to explore these characters, their relationships, and the places they go to. And my goodness, I was so surprised with the places these characters went to. If this was rated 13+, they couldn’t have gone that far. Every character is so deep, you can connect with all of them. The performances, I needn’t mention, because Marvel always cast right, but I will focus on two. 

The villain. My biggest issue with Marvel is their lack of compelling villains. Malekith I barely cared about, Whiplash was just… There, and don’t even get me started with Iron Man 3. This show feels like the complete opposite. Vincent D’Onofrio as Wilson Fisk was how a villain should be. There’s a whole episode dedicated to exploring his past. He was humanised. He truly thought he was correct with his ways, and you could see why. He had a relationship with someone and he was really invested in that. He was socially awkward. He was good with words, but you wouldn’t want to be around him when he snapped, because things wouldn’t end well for you. He was a bad guy, you knew it, but he was so well explored and well done, that at some points you feel for him. You feel his pain, you understand him. He had a character arc, and not a cliched bad-guy-turns-good one. Most reviewers have credited him as the best performance, and while they certainly have a point, I think one other performance beats him out by a tad bit. 

I cannot see anyone else as Matthew Murdock now. Charlie Cox killed it. I genuinely thought he was blind. He had to play two characters, almost, in Daredevil as well, but at the same time, Matt Murdock himself was so complicated, but he nailed it. I’m not going to say much about him, but he was so good. 

Daredevil was written in a really smart way. The way each episode is told is unique, and you know everything is related, but the characters don’t. The show focuses intently on the characters, and everyone has an arc over the thirteen episodes. And that’s another thing. The pacing. The show didn’t drag on. And it wasn’t too short. Well, you know, it feels short because I want more (Which I will get, in March!), but you know what I mean. I was emotionally invested with everything in this. It was so gripping that it makes me grateful to Netflix for releasing every episode at once, or else I probably would have lost my mind. 

One last thing. Anyone hoping to see a lot of the proper Daredevil suit will be disappointed. But I really don’t care. 

This show is so good that I will even alter my own rating system for it. Conventionally, it is based on my first name, with M being the lowest and R being the highest rating. For this, I’ll even add my last name, with the scale becoming even bigger, and the very last lettering being the highest rating. As always, the highlighted letter is the rating. 

Marvel’s Daredevil (Season 1): MIHIR CHAKRAPANI