Amid a lot of hype, drama series Heroes has arrived on BBC2 on Wednesday evenings. Watching the X-Men films, I always thought that a multi-character superhero story was better suited for an ongoing television series than for cinema, since many characters only get a couple of significant moments on-screen. Having heard good things about the series from friends who’ve seen it already, I tuned in hoping that it would be good.

In the first episode of behind-the-scenes documentary Heroes Unmasked (which succeeded in being even more self-congratulatory than Doctor Who Confidential, no mean feat when Russell T Davies is in fully enthusiastic PR mode!) they boasted about it being like a movie shoot. Heroes obviously has a lot of money behind it, and it looks very slick. But that’s of little consequence if the story isn’t any good.

It’s early days yet, but the beginning is promising. Around the world, people are beginning to develop strange new powers, and we see the impact of these powers on the lives of the ensemble of characters, whose paths sometimes cross and look set to eventually converge. Through an artist who can paint the future, and a Japanese guy Hiro (by far the most entertaining character) travelling through time, we learn that unless something is done to stop it, a nuclear explosion will devastate New York in five weeks time. Meanwhile, a serial killer and a sinister organisation are hunting down those with superpowers…

I have to say it’s got me hooked. One of the frustrating things about it is that since it moves between so many characters, you get a little bit of one person’s story and you might not get any more until next week. This does make it somewhat slow-moving, but since there are so many questions of “what happens next?”, this does help make it strangely addictive. The cliffhangers are generally pretty good too.

I wonder what Heroes would be like if it focused on one character at a time on an episode by episode basis? In series 2 of Battlestar Galactica, the first half a dozen episodes or so were closely linked together in a similar style to Heroes. There were at least three largely distinct plotlines running in parallel in different locations, and we kept cutting between them. Eventually they were woven together, but it could have been more effective to focus on one plot for an episode.

For example, there’s a subplot about some Cylons boarding the Galactica, and that could have made a wonderfully creepy and focused Base Under Siege story. But any sense of fear and claustrophobia of being stuck on a ship with hostile robots trying to take it over is diluted by cutting away to storylines on other planets. Of course, if Heroes did do episodes mainly focused on one particular character, I might end up only bothering to tune in for those that were about Hiro!

Time will tell whether it will deliver on the promise of the first few episodes or whether it will end up meandering endlessly like Lost. At the moment, it’s intriguing and enjoyable, but could quickly become frustrating. Here’s hoping!