With great power comes great responsibility

Last night's TV reviewed: Heroes, The Baron, Strictly Baby Fight Club

There aren't many stories that wouldn't be improved by the addition of a few superpowers, preferably in conjunction with skin-tight costumes and masks, but I'm not going to be dogmatic about that. All that "from his mother's womb untimely ripped" nonsense at the end of Macbeth, for example: much more satisfying for Macduff to pull out a hunk of green kryptonite, thereby depriving Macbeth of the super-strength and invulnerability that have got him where he is. Wouldn't it be a breath of fresh air if Mr Darcy disclosed that the reason he's been acting so cold is that he had to protect his secret identity, and was wary of Elizabeth Bennet cottoning on to the fact that he has the proportionate strength and agility of a genetically modified spider? And there isn't a single short story by Raymond Carver that doesn't scream for the presence of a band of costumed mutant vigilantes, preferably ones who've been trained in a lost oriental martial art.

Heroes (BBC 2), though: Heroes sometimes feels a mite cluttered, superpower-wise. Returning viewers may recall that some winnowing seemed to have gone on at the end of the last series, when sensitive, brown-eyed Peter Petrelli (secret power: can copy everyone else's powers) inadvertently turned himself into a human atomic bomb and then went off, apparently taking his smoothie-chops brother Nathan (secret power: flying) with him. But nothing is ever that clear-cut in the world of superheroes. When you've stripped them of their powers, dropped a building on their heads or sent them hurtling into the heart of the sun, following it up with a full-page illustration of their headstone complete with roses wilting atop a mound of fresh earth, that's when they're at their most dangerous.

As the hit US sci-fi series Heroes (BBC2) returned, the biggest question was this. Now that the ever expanding gang of superheroes have fulfilled their brief to “save the cheerleader, save the world”, just what is there left to do? Not a lot, was the answer, if last night’s disjointed season two opener was anything to go by. Tim Kring, the creator of Heroes has apologised for this second season of the hit show about a group of people who discover, for good and bad, that they possess special powers. Kring says the imminent romantic storylines are not “a natural fit”, and that the pacing of this 11-episode season is amiss. His mea culpa, the TV equivalent of doing a Ratner, is an acknowledgement of how winning the first season of Heroes became — especially to those who would normally balk at a science fiction show. The light and shade of the characters intersected with a plot cleverly constructed to be as simple or devilish as your brain could cope with. As with sprawling predecessors such as 24, Lost and Prison Break, the price of a second series appeared to be the complete abandonment of coherence.

The new season had barely started when Nathan, the ruthless politico, turned up; but this is a new, sadder and possibly wiser Nathan – you can tell because he now hangs around in bars with a really bushy beard. Which is, I ought to clarify, attached to his face. He is consumed by grief over his brother’s presumed death and seems to have inherited Niki the stripper’s penchant for seeing doppelgangers in mirrors. So, what, we're supposed to believe that a small thing such as blowing up in a cloud of radioactivity would hurt Peter? Sure enough, there he was, chained up half-naked and not obviously irradiated in a freight container in Cork, surrounded by mean-looking men with rubbish Irish accents; they suspected him of having made off with a cargo of iPods they were planning to half-inch, returning to the scene of the crime to chain himself up and feign amnesia. The whole superpower bit is by no means the least plausible part of Heroes. Their mother, crackling with malevolence, is facing the threat of death. Just after warning her to disappear, Hiro’s father himself was rushed off the roof by a mysterious figure (a roof characters regularly fall off and pick themselves up from, it should be noted).

Meanwhile, Claire, the cheerleader (secret power: amazing body...sorry... amazing self-repairing body), has gone into hiding with her family in some nondescript town in California. But her latest beau seems to be able to fly; and, after a nasty fall, she clicked everything back into place. Dad Noah (secret power: can say lines such as "I love you more than anything in the world, Claire-bear" without puking) is working as assistant manager at a copy-store, which, by the way, looks like a pretty sweet deal, what with the big house and the big car it's paying for, and plotting against the evil, superhero-enslaving Company.

Mohinder, the earnest geneticist who knows how to wear linen (secret power: ability to intone appallingly sententious voice-over), was in Cairo complaining that nobody would take him seriously, yet somehow giving well-attended lectures to fellow academics on the subject of the heroes and a mysterious new disease he claims they are heir to. He is also fending off the attentions of a nerdy Company rep (secret power: can turn teaspoons into gold, which makes you wonder why he needs a job with the evil guys). Nice Matt, the copper (secret power: reads minds), is retraining with the New York police, and caring for troubled Molly, the little girl he saved, (secret power: can find people with superpowers). She is now being targeted by the evil Sylar.

Everybody's favourite character, Hiro (secret power: can bend the space-time continuum), has accidentally transported himself to 17th-century Japan, where he met his samurai hero, Takezo Kensei, who turned out to be a profiteering scoundrel. And English. Hiro’s new quest is to actually make a hero out of a crooked coward. “You must save the swordsmith and make the swordsmith’s daughter fall in love with you,” he told Kensei — only to receive a punch in the face. Back in the present, Hiro's father (secret identity: Mr Sulu from Star Trek), and Nathan's mother (secret power: is a real bitch) are receiving death threats...

This is, by any standards, enough to be going on with. But no, we also have to follow the panic-filled, faintly incestuous relationship of mysterious Latin American twins Alejandro and Maya (secret power – look away now if you didn't cheat and watch episode two on digital: bleeding from eyes while those in vicinity keel over dead). Somebody out there has the secret power of being able to generate limitless numbers of ludicrous plotlines, and they've forgotten the great lesson taught us by The Amazing Spider-Man many years ago: with great power comes great responsibility.

The storytelling was still taut and the zest of season one remains largely intact. “How long can they dwell in the shadows?” Mohinder asks at the beginning. Not long: the “heroes” had to save New York the first time round from a fiery apocalypse, and now have to contain a virus. One could be generous and say that everything will get clearer once things are under way again. But I’m not so sure. Heroes never had much of a guiding principle beyond its characters’ vague quest to save the world from unspecified evil. Now they’ve done that one gets the impression the show was only recommissioned for the sake of it – or for the sake of its heroic power to generate advertising revenue, in America at least...

After this profusion of stories, The Baron has an appealing high-concept simplicity: celebrities woo a village for votes to win the genuine hereditary title of Baron of Troup. The programme was in direct competition with Question Time on BBC1, where London's mayoral candidates were doing precisely the same thing. The complication for the show is that the best they can do in the way of celebs is Suzanne Shaw, a veteran of ITV talent contests, Mike Reid (who died of a heart attack aged 67 last July leading to the series being shelved), and the punk Svengali Malcolm McLaren – all a disappointment to the folk of Gardenstown (no relation whatsoever to Gordonstoun) a small fishing village in north-east Scotland, who were thinking in terms of Sean Connery, and who are an unusually devout set of people. It is silly and exploitative in several ways, but Malcolm McLaren being told by his hosts how much joy it would give them to see him accept the Lord Jesus in his heart: you cannot put a price on a sight such as that.

Gardenstown is very devout. It has no mobile-phone reception so it may, in fact, be heaven. Not, however, to McLaren, the former manager of the Sex Pistols ("What a dreary, forsaken place! Even the fish have left"). Has Malcolm McLaren seen The Wicker Man? Let’s hope he survives without becoming a sacrifice of the people of Aberdeenshire. Highlights of next week’s episode of this peculiar show showed McLaren jumping into a car, fearing the imminent arrival of a “lynch mob” just after he had informed a mainly religious gathering that “God is a sausage”. McLaren is dry and posh, ex-pop star Shaw predictably perky, and Reid avuncular and forever Frank Butcher. You knew that McLaren would be magnificent trouble from the moment in the minibus on the way from the airport when he gestured miserably to the surrounding countryside and said, “I suppose Aberdeen is behind us . . .”

While the trio campaign to become Baron, the producers have housed them with locals. Reid turned Frank on at full volume. Shaw went to stay with the town butcher. “The godfather of punk” scored the earliest hit with the town’s children by telling them the title of the Sex Pistols album, 'Never Mind the Bollocks'. They carried his suitcase to the home of a couple of evangelical Christians who didn’t recognise him. “That doesn’t sound like our kind of music,” the husband said. “We serve the Lord,” added his wife. McLaren rolled his eyes and slept in. He spent a lot of time sleeping, like a dormouse transplanted to an unfamiliar flowerbed. He knows where the spotlight is and misbehaves accordingly. This was becoming diverting fun. Reid discovered that Frank wasn’t welcome everywhere. In the Spar, he told a lame joke and faced a mini-batallion of pursed lips. McLaren shook off his hosts and made instant friends with the only other punk in the village. He was happiest around outsiders, he said, as he cheerily swapped gossip ("Rodent's left Carol, you know"). Frankly, I am not amazed. If Carol wanted commitment, she shouldn't have shacked up with someone called Rodent.

The three candidates made their first speeches at one of the six churches in town in front of 200 people. Shaw told everyone she hoped the experience would be positive and smiled a lot, despite previously forecasting she would be assailed by “psychotic Tourette’s and say ‘Fuck you’”. Reid lumbered up to the microphone and issued a gravelly “Paaaat” and said he loved the taahhhn. McLaren, tired of their “gushy love”, informed the mainly Christian gathering “to be good at being good is boring” and launched into a wonderful, halting soliloquy: “My father was Scottish and something of a drunk. I only met him when I was 45. My mother was Spanish/Portuguese and a Jew.” He said he didn’t have religious beliefs but had a belief “in art”. The audience looked on stonily; Reid and Shaw said he had lost them. Suddenly you thought: Go Malcolm.

Afterwards, the townspeople filled out response forms: “Only Lord Jesus will save him” read one of McLaren’s. Reid was offended by people thinking “Is it just an act?”. And Shaw’s response to someone saying she had no substance was to (wrongly, I think, I paused it) claim they had misspelt “substance”, then dismiss her potential voters as a “fucking bunch of knobheads”. Even the producers seemed a touch fazed by Gardenstown. The candidates were later invited to Yeller Fish Night ("Which pretty much sums up what happens," the commentary explained, a touch desperately. "A simple meal of smoked fish and boiled potatoes"). It had clear religious overtones so was not, perhaps, the best place for McLaren to declare "Evil be thou my good". When McLaren dies, he will come back as a spoon, having an infinite capacity for stirring it. He is perfectly polite in private but seems hell-bent in public, which is unfortunate in a candidate. Just ask Ken Livingstone. Next week, watch him run for it, pursued by angry Christians.

Controversy hummed around this week’s Cutting Edge (Channel 4), Strictly Baby Fight Club, prior to transmission. Anyone who saw the trailers, featuring a semi-apoplectic bullet-headed dad baying “Go on Princess, kick ’er” at his five-year-old daughter in a boxing ring, could be forgiven for thinking this would be a programme about the 2008 equivalent of bear-baiting, with babies taking the place of bears. But Kirsty Cunningham’s intelligent film soberly highlighted a disturbing trend – the growth of Thai boxing among young children – and the frighteningly bug-eyed support of their parents.

Sohan's father, a fork-lift driver, put it most poignantly. His son is nine. "My dream is for Sohan to become the world champion. I always wanted people to look at me and say, 'There's the champ!' but it's as good as. I've never had the opportunity to become a superstar, but my son has. Sohan's living the life I should have lived. It's so real for me. When he's punching, I'm punching. When he gets hurt, I'm hurt. The clouds are going to open and the gods will be looking down on a champ." Sohan lost.

Five-year-old Miah was sobbing as she was put in the boxing ring. "Aaah!" said the audience, charmed. Her father, Darren, trains her. Her mother, Lisa (or "nail technician, Lisa" as the commentary put it), makes up her face. "We've not to cry, have we?" she said, brushing on the blusher. "Otherwise what comes off? Your sparkle comes off." Miah wept sparkling tears. "Come on, princess, kick 'er!" yelled Darren, while Lisa filmed the fight. Miah lost, too.

As it transpired, Cunningham’s film offered a more balanced view of Thai boxing and what it offers the children who participate in it. With the exception of the above-mentioned Miah (whose plaintive pre-bout sobbing blew apart her father’s claim that “she wouldn’t fight if she didn’t want to”) the youngsters featured appeared on some level to enjoy the sport. And with contestants swathed in protective gear, and no blows to the head allowed, it looked at lot safer than traditional boxing. But any judgement was left to the viewer: the parents, while feverishly aggressive when their children were in the ring, explained their children’s involvement in the sport and how seriously they took safety. It still wasn’t palatable. The sight of nine and 10-year-olds kicking each other for sport was unpleasant. The children’s bodies seemed too little and fragile to take it. What are those parents doing, you thought. How can they put their child in a ring and scream at them to hurt another child? And there was always the suspicion that many of the watching adults were getting a nasty voyeuristic thrill from it. Why else would an audience have paid £35-a-head to watch two 10-year-olds fighting in a cage, as they had in one case?

Well done, Thai boxing looks like fleas fighting. The children's skinny limbs cartwheel as they whirl. Connor and Thai (destined for the sport from the font) were 10-year-old veterans with shelves full of trophy glitter. They fought in the cage for the Junior British Cage Thai Box Title. Connor wore a helmet; Thai didn't. There was some parental acrimony about who had kicked whom in the head. Connor's pencil-thin hips could hardly support the massive belt he won. His mother had signed a waiver not to sue if he died. In some ways Connor seemed the only boy to be doing it for himself. Having won his fight, and speaking from under an outsized tweed cap, he cockily announced that with his desired future earnings of £10 million he would buy “two Bentleys and a massive house”.

It is said that one can judge a society’s level of civilisation by what it does for sport. In this case you’d have to say we’ve taken a backward step. All told, this was a powerful piece from Kirsty Cunningham. The proud parents did not see it coming up from the floor. Anyone can fail to see a kick coming. That's the point.