TV Pilot: Agents of SHIELD Reviewed...

The secret is out. Though the full extent has been contained and shoved under a rug that proclaims'Nothing to see, oh, look... over there, a distraction!', the world has seen extraordinary people fighting impossible battles over New York. They'd heard about the billionnaire who liked to dres sup in red and gold armour to get his kicks, but now they've glimpsed green giants, decades-old flag-wavers and a guy who acts like a God with a perchant for Shakespearian dialogue.

Skye (Chloe Bennet) is determined to know the truth, to uncover the secrets behind the secrets - and to avoid those pesky 'men in black' that seem to be cleaning, tidying and generally 'managing' the aftermath of strange incidents. A one-woman army under the name of 'Rising Tide' she will stop at nothing to unvover the truth. She will never get distracted!

Agent Phil Coulson, who miraculously seems to have survived the Avengers battle) has a problem. The footage that Skye has uploaded to her site indicates a much bigger and more dangerous situation than anyone realises - something that will require the attention of Coulson and a new team of experts he is putting together - including Grant Ward (Brett Dalton) a top-class agent, Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons  (Iain de Caestecker and Elizabeth Hesntridge) who specialise in tech and bio threats respectively and Melinda May (a top incursion specialist returning to field-duty against her wishes ) played by Ming-Na. Agent Coulson will need... a distraction. 

It takes some nerve to go up against the most popular drama in America. In the US, NCIS positively owns not just its time-slot on the CBS network but the ratings crown for one-hour dramas. So perhaps it was a statement of intent that rival network ABC decided to put its brand-spanking new show opposite the behemoth.

And so the battles of the initials begins. N.C.I.S. vs. S.H.I.E.L.D.

It helps, of course, that Marvel's: Agents of SHIELD (to give it it's full copyright-hugging title) comes from out of the shadow of several of the most successful superhero movies of all time. If The Avengers was the main event for the Marvel Universe to date then SHIELD is the encore - once again under the genre-fingerprint scanner of director, writer and cult king Joss Whedon.

As could be reasonably expected the result is all tremendous fun, zipping along with quips, kicks and easter-eggs for the attentive - a pilot that has a serious advantage of most of its audiences knowingsomething about its internal mythology and thus escaping some of the usual exposition needed.

Mainstay Clark Gregg is as excellent as you'd expect, effortlessly oozing charisma and if his team-mates sometimes feel like archetypes, then it's still early days. And hey, any man with aan appreciation for Lola is not to be trifled with.The pilot is fun but isn't perfect - or, at least, is a different animal than some might have expected.. Those wanting a big superhero movie squeezed onto a smaller screen and forty-four minutes of schedule are likely to be slightly disappointed. But this is a series that was always going to be the 'Noises Off' of the genre movies, the characters lurking in the world that is just off camera from all you see at the multiplex. There are references - and Cobie Smulders (as Agent Hill) does make an extended cameo and there are a few Whedon favourites added to the mix. 

It does have the pace and momentum and if it doesn't have quite that ultimate zinger that would propel it to a 10/10, it has all the right ingredients and they are mixed with aplomb. It perhaps only needs time to settle or to find the right momentum to make it rise to full marks - to be actually clever in its stories and resolutions rather than just fun (there's no REAL sense of peril in the pilot, no trademark deathliness as per usual Whedon works-  just  almost J J Abrams-like adventure). As things progresswe need to be a little more invested rather than just entertained. But here we have a show that had every advantage and has tried not to waste them - on the whole it suceeds, even if it doesn't push too hard on any of its boundaries and will have a majority of its audience coming back for more and between big-screen movies. On its US broadcast on Tuesday it attracted just short of a highly impressive twelve million in viewers - not enough to beat the NCIS powerhouse, but more than enough to show it has legs.

And wings.

And thrusters.

Like Coulson...watch 'Lola' run...

ABC are repeating it on Thursday's primetime line-up just to be sure. It hits UK television screens this Friday on Channel Four.