Comic-book heroes – particularly from the DC universe – have rarely been more successful on TV. Word arrived in October that US network CBS (the home of the CSI franchise and other crime procedurals) was looking to get in on the action by commissioning Supergirl. We now know that Melissa Benoist will be playing Kara Zor-El in the show.
The plot will follow Kal-El’s cousin, who escaped Krypton as he did and ended up on Earth. Initially unwilling to acknowledge her powers, she starts to come into her own in her mid-twenties and accept her heroic destiny. It’s the brainchild of Greg Berlanti, the man behind two of the bigger superhero shows on TV right now, Arrow and The Flash and Ali Adler, who worked on Chuck and short-lived super-powered domestic drama No Ordinary Family.
"As you can tell from the strength of the female characters we have on television," CBS entertainment president Nina Tassler told critics at the Television Critics Association winter press tour, "it’s a real passion of ours. We heard the pitch to Supergirl, and we realised that she embodied so many of the qualities and the characteristics of classic female heroines on this network, and we think that it is a story and a coming of age opportunity for us. We also just fell in love with the pitch. We think she’s a great character, and I love the superhero genre."
Benoist is a guest-shot veteran of shows such as Homeland and The Good Wife and appeared in a chunk of musical high school show Glee. She’s currently on cinema screens as Nicole, the young woman that Miles Teller’s Andrew Nieman falls for in Whiplash. With Teller in **Fantastic Four **and now Benoist scoring this job, all we need now is for J.K. Simmons to appear in a superhero franch... Oh, that's right: he beat them both to it, didn't he?