She-Hulk: Attorney At Law: TV Review

It's not easy being green - just ask Kermit.

Marvel's latest small screen foray seems the powerhouse studio venture into the comedy world - with varying success, and an occasional feeling of flatness.

She-Hulk is the fourth-wall breaking story of Jennifer Walters, a wannabe district attorney, whose careeer is brought shudderingly to a halt after an accident. Out on a trip with her cousin, Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), Jen's life is irrevocably changed when the car flips, she's injured and Banner bleeds into her.

Turned into a Hulk by Banner's inadvertent infection, Jen is forced into a new way of living with the beast within. However, unlike Bruce - and much to his chagrin - Jen finds she can control the green giant because she's spent a lifetime suppressing her anger and dealing with society.

"Every day I have to deal with getting cat-called in the street, men who want to explain my area of expertise to me and trying to avoid being described as ‘emotional’, ‘difficult’, or literally getting murdered," she explains in one of the show's more heavy-handed moments as it expresses its message and damns daily life for women worldwide.

What follows in She-Hulk: Attorney At Law (or the first four episodes at least which were available for review) is somewhat of a mixed bag.

For a show that's marketed so heavily on its comedy, it's surprisingly light on that front - and bizarrely seems to rely on everyone else but Jennifer Walters to supply the lion's share of the laughs (somewhat robbing her of her own agency in her own series).

It also leans very heavily on existing Marvel characters to propel the series along, again depriving Walters of a major showcase in the spinoff. Certainly, there's nothing wrong with these cameos, and there's little here that suggests it doesn't warrant it, but the mix doesn't quite feel balanced in the right way.

Its first episode delivers the usual origin story, albeit in a flipped model way, and following ones settle into the law elements a little more - but it never quite finds a tone of its own, and feels like a case of the week story stretched out over four episodes.

Thankfully, Tatiana Maslany more than delivers to make up for some of the failures elsewhere.

Used to juggling multiple characters with ease thanks to Orphan Black's many faceted storylines, Maslany straddles the mixed tones needed with ease, and delivers a perfect combination of the subtleties needed for She-Hulk and the world of Jennifer Walters.

It may be that She-Hulk: Attorney At Law doesn't quite yet have anything new or original to say about a woman's place in the world, dating or the societal pressure to be something different to succeed, but it's certainly a capable enough show of offering a few surprises - here's hoping the back five episodes of the series strive for that and bring a curtain down in style on Marvel's Phase 4 plans.

She-Hulk: Attorney At Law is streaming on Disney+ from Thursday August 18.