Stan Lee's Lucky Man: James Nesbitt is a British hero with proper super-powers

Britain has not been well-served by its small-screen superheroes, who tend to be played for laughs. But tomorrow night James Nesbitt is coming to the rescue, as a cop with incredible luck. David Barnett appraises Stan Lee's new creation

What a caper: James Nesbitt in ‘Lucky Man’ (Sky 1)

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's twinkle-eyed James Nesbitt, come to save us from a dearth of proper British TV superheroes.

The superhero is as much a part of American culture as apple pie, Mickey Mouse and guns for sale in Walmart – so much that it would barely be a shock to see a flash of blue and red over the skies of one of their great metropolises. After all, Superman, the grandaddy of them all, first appeared in 1938. He has since spawned a host of brightly costumed peers on paper. Similarly, the phenomenal success of Marvel movies such as The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy has, in turn, birthed a small-screen revolution with shows such as Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Agents of SHIELD, Arrow and The Flash.

All of whom, of course, are American. However, now entering the fray comes Nesbitt in Sky 1's new drama Lucky Man, which posits a very British superhero: the archetypal "brilliant but troubled cop", Harry Clayton. On the verge of losing everything – he has a gambling habit – he meets the requisite enigmatic stranger, who gives him a mysterious bracelet, and this basically gives him the superpower of incredible luck. Rather than immediately buying a dozen lottery tickets, Clayton embarks on tackling a sinister crime wave sweeping London.

With screenwriter Neil Biswas at the helm, we can safely say this series will fall at the grittier, more serious end of the superhero spectrum. (His credits include Skins and the Bradford Riots dramatisation.) But this will be a huge change from the usual superhero fare that British TV turns out.

Comedy geeks won't need reminding of My Hero, which was broadcast from 2000 until 2006 and starred Ardal O'Hanlon – fresh from playing the idiot Dougal in Father Ted – as an even more idiotic British superhero, Thermoman. Also played for laughs was No Heroics, which ran for just one season on ITV2 in 2008. Set around a bar called The Fortress – a nod to Superman's bolt-hole, the Fortress of Solitude – it was actually pretty funny, with a bunch of third-tier heroes using their powers for mundane effect (The Hotness helped to heat old people's homes) or personal gain (Electroclash uses her machine-control abilities to nick fags from cigarette machines).

Then there was the darkly comic Misfits, which ran on E4 for five series, about a bunch of young offenders who get superpowers from a mysterious electrical storm while doing community service.

Aside from that, we've had Bananaman, the cartoon series voiced by The Goodies – adapted from a successful comic strip that had appeared in The Dandy and The Beano – and, erm, Supergran, in which a tartan-clad Gudrun Ure brought pensioner-power to bear on a series of Geordie thugs.

Ardal O'Hanlon played idiotic British superhero Thermoman in My Hero (BBC)

All of which raises the question: why are our TV superheroes either misanthropic outsiders or anarchic takes on the American model?

Mark Millar, the Glasgow-born comic book writer, reckons we're more Dennis the Menace than Batman over here. "I think our icons are anti-heroes," he says. "The most famous comic character here is a schoolboy who knocks hats off coppers. In the States, it's a rich guy in a cape who catches bank robbers." The thing is, he continues, "superheroes, by their nature, need to be rooted in optimism, which Brits rarely do as well as Americans."

Perhaps that will all change with James Nesbitt's turn in Lucky Man – because it does have one secret superpower: it's been developed for Sky by none other than Stan Lee, the nonagenarian legend who created Spider-Man, Thor and Captain America. Lee says of his new concept: "I have always thought that luck would probably be the greatest power of all – because if you are lucky, everything turns out right."

But of course, it takes your British correspondent to point out that luck need not necessarily be good.

'Stan Lee's Lucky Man' begins on Sky 1 tomorrow at 9pm