• by Ed Martin , November 8, 2013

This week's most interesting announcement about television programming came from Netflix, The Walt Disney Company and Disney-owned Marvel. It's a wide-ranging project -- one that is likely to dominate the annual San Diego Comic-Con for years to come.

The announcement concerned a new programming and scheduling agreement between the three entertainment entities that will result in four new series franchises consisting of thirteen episodes each on Netflix and a subsequent mini-series “event” that will bring together characters and stories from those four new shows. (Presumably, the individual hero series will run for one season only, in effect making each a thirteen-hour movie. But if the four series and the mini-series are successful, anything can happen.)

Each of the four series will be built around a Marvel Comics character with strong ties to the New York City neighborhood known as Hell's Kitchen. The four characters are blind superhero Daredevil (also known as The Man Without Fear), a woman named Jessica Jones who gained extreme powers after being doused with radioactive chemicals in a car accident (and who has had several hero identities in the Marvel universe), martial-arts master Iron Fist and chemically enhanced ex-convict and former gang-member Luke Cage (who at one point in Marvel history fathered Jessica Jones' child and then married her).

The mini-series “event,” as Disney, Netflix and Marvel refer to it, will bring the four heroes together as the super-team The Defenders. (In the Marvel Comics universe, The Defenders comic book since its debut in the Seventies has featured a continuously changing cast of superhero and supernatural characters.)

The writing, casting and directing will be critical to the success of these series, because with the possible exception of Daredevil these characters are not among the best known on the gigantic Marvel canvas. Of course, that very fact may make it easier to construct fantastic adventures for all of them that won't offend legions of detail-obsessed fans (who can be very sensitive to how their heroes are handled) and may actually attract a generation of new followers.

I'm familiar with all of these characters, and I recall from the early years of the Daredevil, Luke Cage and Iron Fist comics that Hell's Kitchen served as a truly dark and dangerous backdrop for many of their stories. But I have to wonder whether anyone involved with this project has spent much time lately in that neighborhood, which is currently as lively and vibrant as any other in Manhattan. Perhaps there are still a few treacherous streets with which I am not familiar. But I digress …

There was no word as to whether all five of these series would be “dropped” into Netflix's ever-expanding library at the same time or if they will be staggered in some fashion. I like to think that one might follow the other until all five are available, which would keep audience enthusiasm high over many months, if not an entire year.

That might be a good idea, because collectively these five Marvel productions would make for a gut-busting binge. One thing we have learned in recent months with Netflix's high-profile hits “House of Cards” and “Orange is the New Black” is that after hurriedly gobbling them up in one long sitting (or over an otherwise unproductive weekend) fans are often distressed that they must wait an entire year or longer for more episodes. So it may be that a little restraint will actually enhance the overall experience of enjoying the Marvel shows. 

I also like to think that the relative absence of content restrictions on Netflix will allow the creative teams that will work on these shows to make them edgier and more compelling than ABC's decidedly unremarkable “Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”, a show that should be so much more exciting than it is. Most of the episodes of that series so far have felt like dramatic hours one might have watched in the Seventies or Eighties, but without the life-giving camp. The one thing “S.H.I.E.L.D.” has going for it is that it takes place in the same world as Marvel’s big-budget movies. (I like to think the Netflix shows will also tap into this multiple-franchise continuity, or at least do nothing to break it.)

Regardless, the Disney-Netflix-Marvel deal has the potential to deliver a viewing experience unlike any we have before enjoyed on traditional television networks or Internet programming services. There appears to be as much creativity at work here in planning the rollout of these shows as in actually producing them. If they work, the possibilities of future collaborations between Disney, Netflix and Marvel are endless.

Marvel Comics has made a business in recent years of producing sweeping event stories that run through multiple comic book titles over periods of several months. Netflix feels like the perfect environment in which to bring some of that excitement to the television viewing experience.