Five years after his presumed death by drowning, billionaire playboy Oliver Queen is rescued from an isolated island off the coast of China. The name of the island? Lian Yu; which we are told is Mandarin for "purgatory".
Given the name of the place, it's perhaps no surprise that the man who returns from Lian Yu is not the careless, carefree and callow fellow who disappeared half a decade earlier ... though he does his level best to convince everyone that he is.
You see, the man who returns is an avenger (though not an Avenger; wrong comic book universe!) of the wrongs done to his home city. He was set on this path by his father, who did perish in the disaster at sea, and forged for the purpose by the struggle to survive.
The new Oliver Queen is, overall, full of MANPAIN, even before we factor in the complicated mess that is his love life.
Arrow is a bombastic and really quite silly program that is lifted firstly by the fact that it plays its own bombast straight, and second by an excellent supporting cast of fun characters, who are well performed. Which is not say that Stephen Amell is bad in the lead role of Oliver Queen - he is quite serviceable, and for those who like such things, he takes his shirt off a lot - but this first season's arc is very much about his character reclaiming from of the warmth and humanity that was knocked out of him by his time on the island. So he's Broody McBroodsalot for most of the time. I mean, just look at that mug on the DVD image above!
This is really solid "Batman with a bow" superhero action. Recommended if you're at all willing to buy into the premise.
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