TV SHOW REVIEW - Arrow: Season 1

Earlier this year, the CW announced that Season 8 of Arrow would be it's last, and I’d be lying to you if I said I hadn’t shed a tear. The show started in 2012 and has been integral to my TV watching habits. But I wondered if the show had aged well and if rewatching it would give me the same pleasure it did, all those years ago.

‘Arrow’ tells the story of a young man, Oliver Queen, who was shipwrecked on an island of the coast of China. He spent 5 years there before he was rescued and returned home to Starling City. However, what everyone doesn’t know is that whilst he was on that island, he underwent a ridiculous amount of training and returned with only one goal; to save his city from the corruption of criminals and large corporations. He then stumbles upon something that he believes will fundamentally change his city forever, and naturally finds himself stepping up.

Now despite most people knowing that this is the story of the Green Arrow, the show does remarkably well to distance itself from the rather tamer comic book storyline. The plotlines for most of the episodes are fairly engaging and exciting, with the odd filler episode that perhaps lacks an overall story. That being said, I personally found that even on rewatching, my attention was fairly kept by the show.

In terms of the actors, at the time when I first started this series, I was fairly new to the TV show scene, so I was largely unaware of almost all of them. The one exception being Malcolm Merlyn, played by John Barrowman who I’d seen in Doctor Who before that. I felt that almost all of the acting was pretty good, and our titular character, played by Stephen Amell, was portrayed excellently.

There are certain bits of the show where you can tell that perhaps the budget wasn’t the biggest that they had, but also it was probably one of the CW’s biggest ventures so I could forgive them on that front. I did however like the flashbacks, and the set designs for those scenes were quite good.

Overall, I think I was a little surprised, in that, I knew there was a reason that I had loved that first season so much, but I certainly hadn’t thought that after all these years I’d feel the same. If you’re looking to get into a decent show, with good action and an underlying comic book storyline, then this is the one!

Rating:

• Story: ★★★½

• Acting: ★★★½

• Filmography: ★★★

• Integral vs Filler Episodes: ★★★

• Enjoyability: ★★★½