Howard Overman

For a few weeks a ­mysterious masked figure has been leaping off buildings and watching over the Misfits like a caped crusader - minus the cape.

Tonight we find out the ­identity of the face behind the mask and it's a revelation that will set the series on a thrilling new path.

Fans might have worried that creator Howard Overman would run out of ideas in series two, but there's no sign of that happening.

His freak of the week sub-plot is an especially good one as we meet another fallout from the storm - a tattooist with an interesting way of leaving his mark on people. Simon's not going to enjoy the mischief this guy's going to cause.

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I don't know what to make of Vexed. At first I only saw its faults. But then, thinking about the wider context of odd-couple comedy dramas - as wide as a krill net, this - I thought, well, at least writer Howard Overman is trying something different. It's not every Sunday night you see detectives ignoring the corpse bleeding on the rug to admire the cornice work.

Scenes like that one will probably have made some of the Sunday night constituency very vexed indeed. But an older audience must surely remember when all crime series were this politically incorrect, and when the central characters were sexist and made anti-gay jokes. Maybe Vexed owes a debt to Life On Mars but it's still remarkable that Jack Armstrong (Toby Stephens) is cracking gags about cancer sufferers, given all the post-Sachsgate rules and regulations. It's as if Vexed has slipped through a hole in the fence during a sentry shift-change at the BBC Trust.

Now five police forces are chasing it round the schedules, turning it into an unlikely recipient for public sympathy.

On balance, I probably want Vexed to be caught before its scheduled end but not before we find out whether Armstrong and fellow DI, the equally self-obsessed Kate Bishop (Lucy Punch) tumble into bed together; because, let's face it, that's why we watch these shows in the first place.

Vexed review

I had high hopes for this comedy-drama about two mismatched private eyes, mainly because it comes from writer Howard Overman, whose work on E4's Misfits turned a seemingly trivial delinquent riff on Heroes into a BAFTA-winning hit. I was hoping some of that magic would rub off on the less fantastical concerns of a lighthearted detective series. Sadly, while Vexed did have its moments, it was more miss than hit...

Transposing the Lethal Weapon template to suburban west London, the rather too knowing Vexed teams Toby Stephens and Lucy Punch as mismatched, bickering detectives. The pace, be warned, is frantic to the point of being exhausting as writer Howard Overman takes the scattergun approach to gags and quips. Get past this, though, and Vexed is actually quite promising, largely because it works so hard to come up with original scenarios. The opener deals with murders related to a supermarket loyalty scheme.

Misfits, whose re-run on Channel 4 is now two-thirds over, is that long-wished-for thing, a television series that shows great creative intelligence and a depth of characterisation rivalling the best of the US shows of the past decade.

Its creator and writer, Howard Overman, has imagined a universe and peopled it with characters who seem to live, rather than appear, in it. The characters reveal themselves both all at once - as vivid, attitude-heavy youth - then bit by small bit, their drives, torments and loves taking shape under the carapace of aggression, indifference or banter with which they face the world.

The misfits are five early-twenty-somethings, all with Asbos, all doing community service. There is Kelly, the chav, with hair scraped back, a perpetual tracksuit and scowl and an accent of dense grunts surrounded with consonants; Nathan, all Irish bull and scabrous wit; Alisha, a mixed-race beauty; Simon, an introverted geek; and Curtis, a world-class sprinter, career destroyed by possession of a line of coke. Convicted of petty crimes, they are set to pay back their debt to "the community" - a debt that none of them recognises, let alone wishes to repay. As Kelly says to a probation officer, when asked what she has learned: "They put up graffiti, we clean it off; then they put up graffiti, and we clean it off. Yaw fink I'm a f****** losuh?"

They are all, of course, losers, but they are Super Losers. In the first (of six) episodes, a freak storm explodes above them, raining down ice and random objects: after it, all have acquired magic powers. Kelly can hear thoughts, Simon can become invisible, Alisha turns every man she touches into a ravenous sex fiend who must have her, Curtis can replay and alter the past, and Nathan - if you have not seen it, you must wait for the last episode two weeks hence.

The series is poised between the grimiest, concrete-encased social reality and the mythic world of superheroes; the latter functions as a medium for displaying the true natures of the misfits, as they struggle to incorporate their powers into their lives and relationships. A poignant example: Alisha, who falls for Curtis and he for her, must forgo sex with him because her power reduces every man to a panting sex slave, and thus pollutes any expression of his real passion. Instead, they undress, and masturbate while gazing at each other. Oddly - as it may seem - the scene is at once comic and poignant: a measure of Misfits' success in elevating what is generally seen as degrading into an expression of love.

Misfits DVD Review

The strange thing about the Misfits DVD's extra features is the conspicuous absence of creator/writer Howard Overman.