The Details

Alphas

Mondays, 10 p.m., SyFy.

With Marvel Comics a little slow in developing live-action superhero TV series, veteran Marvel screenwriter Zak Penn (The Incredible Hulk, the second and third X-Men movies, Elektra) has gone and co-created his own: Alphas features a government-sponsored team of agents with extraordinary abilities, overseen by a Professor X-like mentor (David Strathairn). It’s layered with somber, pseudo-scientific explanations for why these people have powers like mind control, super strength and hyper-enhanced senses, but basically they’re superheroes solving crimes that involve supervillains. The first episode introduces some vague serialized elements about a shady conspiracy, but for the most part Alphas comes off as a really fancy procedural more than a sci-fi series. It’s a light, entertaining and mostly well-acted show that could develop a fascinating mythology or end up just spinning its wheels with second-rate X-Men rip-offs, but for superhero fans, it’s worth a try to see which direction it ultimately takes.