When Tim Kring’s Heroes first aired on British TV, I admit I was hooked. Despite being in my 30s, I’m a big fan of comic books (albeit mostly those written by Brits, and not the ‘superhero’ genre), and this series looked like it could be an exciting and different television adventure.

Initially, this was the case. Although lumbered with a US-style season, there was relatively little padding, and a genuine feeling that anything could happen. The nature of the series—combining various elements of ‘real life’ drama, superhero-style powers but without the ‘superhero’, sci-fi and imagination—meant I always tuned in to see what would happen next, and the series culminated in a suitably satisfying finale.

Since then, it’s all gone a bit wrong, and I found myself genuinely bored with the last series of Heroes far too often. I think I know what the problem is: Heroes has become too much like a US superhero comic book.

Some explanation is clearly needed here, so: generally, in British comics a character gets killed and stays dead. There’s mercifully little retconning, and stories are typically pretty linear, taking into account past history. Things happen and they affect what subsequently happens. In the traditional US superhero comic, this isn’t the case. Major characters are often killed off (such as in the Death of Superman) or their histories massively changed on a whim (such as in Spider-Man: Brand New Day), largely to boost sales, after which point there’s usually a return to the status quo via typically convoluted means.

The difference is stark: in the UK, you never entirely know who’s going to be safe; in the US, even death is not the end. Sadly, the US model is now endemic in Heroes. The stars have become too big and the characters are too popular, and so Kring and his team refuse to take risks. Only minor characters get the chop (in fact, they might as well dress them in Star Trek-style red jerseys), while the writers dream up increasingly implausable means of bringing back the leads time and time again. Net result: you know that major character will almost always survive, which leads to a lack of tension in the series, no real suspension of disbelief, and, eventually, boredom.

If Heroes could inject a little more of the British sensibility into its ethos, it would become more like the show I always assumed it was trying to be: “What if these people exited in the real world?” As it is, we’re increasingly getting a marginally more plausible version of X-Men, crossed with the worst facet of Star Trek, and sooner or later that’s going to drive even relativly dedicated fans away.