Super New Show for Duke

Duke may have lost key superhero franchises to Sky 5 but it’s still banking on the DC Universe to pump up the ratings with the August 5 premiere of Krypton.

Set two generations before the destruction of Superman’s home planet, it will launch with an 8.00 Sunday double-episode off the back of an 80-years-of-Superman special, Krypton: Making of the Legend.

Krypton reviews were middling but the ratings were strong enough for the Syfy channel to order a second season.

“Krypton avoids comparisons to titles such as Smallville and nitpicking by purist followers of Superman’s universe by setting its action 200 years prior to Superman’s birth,” Salon said.

This is the story of Seg-El (Cameron Cuffe), Superman’s roguish scofflaw of a grandfather, and begins before Jor-El is even a thought. Creators David S. Goyer and Damian Kindler remain very much aware of what the DC’s comic faithful demands of a series like this as well as the expectations of viewers who follow the TV version of these characters …

By spinning a legacy that pre-dates Superman by two centuries, the writers open up the opportunity to explore Krypton as a society controlled by oligarchs bent on remaining atop the social pyramid, who exploit a theocracy, held together by a mysterious godhead.

“In a pleasant surprise, Krypton creator David S. Goyer (as a screenwriter, a veteran of Man of Steel and the Dark Knight trilogy) has infused the show not only with a dense, time-bending mythology but upped the ante — with Superman’s eventual birth at stake — while weaving in an irreverent streak that in ways resembles his under-appreciated Starz series, Da Vinci’s Demons,” CNN’s  Brian Lowry observed.

But The Hollywood Reporter thought Krypton “hokey“:

Any series that looks and feels, at least 50 percent of the time, like a spoof is already in a pretty bad spot. But if that series gives off the vibe that the characters inside it look completely uninspired, then you have a whopper of a problem.

Krypton isn’t the only new series Duke is rolling out over the next few weeks.

Tonight it premieres The Warfighters (9.00), a 2016 observational documentary series about recent U.S. Special Operations Forces missions in the global war on terror from executive producer Peter Berg (who directed Lone Survivor), following the return of School of Hard Knocks, while resuming tomorrow with a 10.45 double-episode season two premiere is the comedy Trial and Error.