Alphas Is More Like House Than Heroes, Says Creator

New Syfy superhero show will not be a cape and laser-eye-beams affair

Zak Penn may have written superhero movies like The Incredible Huk and X-Men: The Last Stand , but he reckons his new superpowers show for the US Syfy Channel, Alphas , is more like House than Heroes .

In an interview in the latest issue of SFX he explains that Alphas are individuals with enhanced abilities, and the US Government has recruited a team of them to help track down and eradicate evil Alphas. The enhanced heroes include a young autistic man who functions at a level higher than most computers, a woman who can will other people to do anything, a former FBI agent with incredible physical strength, and a girl with highly enhanced senses, but who can only use them one at a time – at the cost of her other senses.

But the show is not about the power, Penn emphasises: “In most superhero shows – like H eroes or The Cape – the everyday life of it, the naturalism – that kind of stuff doesn’t happen, at least as far as I can see. The X-Men never cancel a trip on the X-Jet because someone got sick with the flu. It just doesn’t happen. The naturalism definitely separates it from those other science fiction shows, and the way that it’s a far more humorous take than you normally see in science fiction. I’ve seen the pilot for Heroes , and Alphas doesn’t feel anything like Heroes to me. Heroes feels a lot like X-Men to me. Those two things feel of a piece. An episode of House feels like it overlaps more with our show than Heroes would.”

Alphas starts airing in the US on Syfy on 11 July.

Read the full interview in issue 210 of SFX , out next Wednesday.