The Umbrella Academy first impression: This Netflix series is mildly entertaining

Their foster father did take them under his wing, but he was aloof — so much so that he forgot to name them and referred to them by their numbers (for instance, he called Luther Number One and so on). It was the children’s foster mother who gave them their names. The children left him because he did not care one bit about them.

As for the entrepreneur, Sir Reginald Hargreeves or The Monocle, he was quite a man himself. He had as his butler a talking chimpanzee and, remarkably enough, knew about the babies and their superpowers. He also might have known about an apocalypse that is in the offing and one of his foster children, The Boy / Number Five (Aidan Gallagher), has seen it and lived to tell the tale. Well, his superpower is time-travel. His identity is The Boy because he is literally a boy, courtesy some screw-up during time-travel.

The first episode is mildly entertaining. There is action, mystery, a little tongue-in-cheek feel and even a bit of family drama — but all this feels like it has been done before.

In today’s superhero surfeit, a TV show or a movie has to be exceptional to distinguish itself. The Umbrella Academy, if it is fair to judge it by its first episode, is just above average and seems hackneyed at that. But it is still good enough to make me curious to know about the mysteries that the episode has put forward. Was the Monocle’s death natural? If not, then who killed him? How did he know about the children and their superpowers and why did he take them in? The apocalypse, who will bring it? And why? Is it Umbrella Academy’s task to save the world? The answer to the last one is likely in affirmative.

The Umbrella Academy is streaming on Netflix.