By Will Barber – Taylor

Ava Kirk, an old friend of Bruce Wayne’s comes to him for help, when her father, Paul, has been cloned by The Council, a mysterious organization to create an army of super soldier Manhunters based on Paul’s alter ego The Manhunter.

Unique really delves back into the comic backlog by including Manhunter, a character who first appeared in DC back in the 1940s. Manhunter was a tracker/vigilante and though he had a striking costume and interesting back story he never really took off as a character and sunk into the background. Unique changes all that by bringing this long forgotten character to the forefront of the story and making it about him.

The plot feels like a Bond movie, a clichéd Bond movie at that. Batman feels at time a tad too Bond like particularly with his dealing with Ava Kirk who feels less like a three dimensional character and more like one of those supermodels that seem to jump out every rock and orifice to entice Fleming’s creation. Batman isn’t really at the centre of this episode really either, he merely serves as a way into what is in essence a story about Manhunter.

Manhunter himself comes across as an interesting and intriguing character that would be great to see in the series again. His advisers, The Council, however are less well thought out. We never get any motive as to why they want to take over the world and what specifically makes them choose Manhunter. Yes he is a top operative but Batman easily defeats him, so why don’t they go after him? More to the point once they have Manhunter’s DNA why do they keep him alive? As long as they have got a copy of it then they don’t need him. In fact, he complicates their plan. To be fair to the producers it is hard to explain everything in a twenty minute TV show but they could have at least tried to get more into it.

Even with its flaws, Unique is still an enjoyable piece of drama and I would recommend that you watch it even if it is just to fill a twenty minute gap in your schedule.

NEXT TIME

HERO