Who Wants To Be A Superhero? (found British children's game show; 2009)
Who Wants To Be A Superhero? was a British children's game show that ran on CBBC from 3rd January - 18th April 2009, 15 episodes were made. It is based on the NBC Universal/Sci-Fi Channel (United States) series of the same name. The show is presented by Sam Nixon, Mark Rhodes and the late Stan Lee. The show is a co-production between CBBC and NBC.
Children aged 9 – 13 create and become their very own, unique, never-before-seen superhero characters for the series, taking part in missions and challenges and living away from home in ‘The Superhero Lair’ in London. Contestants responded to trials on the CBBC Channel and application forms on the CBBC website. Each episode (with the exception of episode 1 – auditions) the superheroes face one or two challenges working as a team, pairs, trios or individually. They are judged by Sam and Mark on their behaviour as a superhero.
Villains
In most episodes, the superheroes take part in challenges and missions (as instructed by Stan Lee) to save the world from evil villain, Dr. Dark. Throughout the series, Dr. Dark tricks them, steals from them, and even goes as far as to imprison Sam and Mark. The villain is assisted by his evil, mutated, scary (and often angry) half-human-half-pig henchmen, whom the superheroes encounter multiple times during their missions. Dr. Dark is eventually defeated in episode 14 by the three finalists, on the roof of the secret lair. In the final episode, Stan Lee creates Fire Fiend, a fire-based enemy for H2O Man's comic book.
Controversy
In early March 2009, the UK mid-market newspaper the Daily Mail attempted to link the programme with the issue of child exploitation in reality television. After approaches to the BBC failed to produce sufficient evidence to support their position, the newspaper approached a number of the contestants' families, resulting in complaints that the newspaper was invading the families' privacies, and injunctions to prevent publication of the children's real identities. Furthermore, it is alleged that some of the story's professional sources had been quoted selectively in such a way as to direct what were general observations as if they were specific criticisms of the programme.
There was also some controversy among viewers about the power down of Steel Soldier, who many viewers felt was powered down to even out the number of girls, seeing as his track record had been much better than the two other superheroes up for powerdown, H2O Man and Gold Starlet.
Availability
Beginning on March 25th, 2023 YouTube user childhoodncstalgia started reuploading episodes of the show. As of April 4th, 2024, all episodes have been found.[1]
External Links
- Alchetron page on Who Wants To Be A Superhero?.
- Episode listing of Who Wants To Be A Superhero?.
- Daily Mail page on Who Wants To Be A Superhero?.
- ↑ Playlist containing all episodes. Retrieved 05 Apr '24