When I was looking at the upcoming TV series, my prediction for The Gifted was:

FOX: The Gifted – Fox wants to expand into the superhero world too, after their relative success with Gotham, RENEWED;

For me, it was practically a given that if it was XMen, it would make it to Season 2. What I missed in the short announcements was that it is set in the XMen universe, the government doesn’t like XMen, and two parents discover their children have powers so they go on the run to hide. It isn’t XMen, it is the Xmen-ish underground.

Or, for those keeping score at home, The Tomorrow People with different characters and actors. You know, the show that lasted a single season.

In this incarnation, two teens exhibit mutant abilities when they try to protect themselves during a bullying incident at school. Percy Hynes White plays Andy, with the ability to move heavy objects — like buildings, atoms, etc. — and shake them. Or fling people. It’s not a very well developed ability yet, more generic. His sister apparently has had abilities for three years and hidden them. Natalie Alyn Lind plays the sister, and I didn’t recognize her from her turn as Silver on Gotham. Much softer look to her character here, and it works. Somebody has looked at the Heroes original, and made her look a lot like Hayden Panettierre (Save the Cheerleader, Save the World, remember?). They’re okay, not awesome.

The interesting part is their parents. Amy Acker (Person of Interest, Angel, Dollhouse) is always fun to watch, and she does okay here as the Mom, but dramatic emotion is not her forté, she’s much better with wry humour and light sarcasm. Stephen Moyer (True Blood) plays the dad, who is actually a prosecutor of mutants in his day job, until he finds out he has two kids who are mutants. I loved his initial scene with a guidance counsellor, very aggressive, very glaring, but the rest of the Ep, he was blah.

For the Tomorrow People, err, the mutant underground, we have Emma Dumont (Aquarius), who for a moment looked like Rachel Nichols (Continuum) to me and I was all excited. She has presence, but not a lot of airtime in the episode. Jeff Daniel Phillips, Hayley Lovitt, Jermaine Rivers rounds out some of the other cast.

Is it great? Not really. And if they were trying to be different from a show that got cancelled, they probably shouldn’t use almost the identical set for the underground headquarters. I’m not even sure it isn’t the EXACT set.

I’ll stick by my original prediction, as I think Fox really wants into the superhero world. And I liked the Tomorrow People, even if the ratings didn’t, so I’ll be watching. At least for this season, which is now a toss-up in my view.