First look: 'Powers' puts superhero spin on cop drama

Here's one way to freshen up the police procedural: Throw in some capes and cowls.

Superheroes and regular folks share screen time in Powers, a new TV drama coming to the Sony PlayStation Network and the first original show to premiere on the gaming platform. The series is in its fourth week of filming in Atlanta but no airdate is set yet for its 10-episode first season — filmmaker David Slade is directing the first two episodes.

"It's such a clever concept to try and imagine a real world where you actually have to deal with powers and how they impact society, and to do that through the lens of a cop drama," says executive producer Charlie Huston.

Based on the long-running comic book series by writer Brian Michael Bendis (who's also an executive producer on the show) and artist Michael Avon Oeming, Powers leans into the classic TV trope of pairing a veteran cop with a rookie.

The twist? One of them used to be a superhero.

Played by Sharlto Copley (District 9), Christian Walker has an expertise in dealing with people boasting extraordinary abilities and knows how to get in their heads, how their powers operate and how he can leverage that to solve cases.

He's never been properly trained as a real cop, though. So part of the point of teaming him with Deena Pilgrim (Susan Heyward of The Following) is that "she knows nothing about this world," Huston says. "She's really young, she's really inexperienced, but she's a completely instinctive, awesome detective."

They're "the heart and the soul" of Powers, Bendis says, yet he promises a "different experience" than the comic. "My dream was for the show and the books to almost run in parallel universes as they explore the same themes."

For example, the Christian on the page is much more stoic than the up-tempo character that Copley plays.

When they first saw him, Huston recalls thinking, "I don't know what kind of Walker that is but I totally want to see it."

The No. 1 goal was finding someone who could be a cop now but one could fathom that they used to fly around, Bendis says. "That's really harder to pull off than you think."

And with Copley's energy, he adds, "you can believe he can do anything."

Heyward, on the other hand, matched the Deena from the comics perfectly, according to Huston.

"She is this amazing fireball," he says. "You do 12-hour days and it's getting into 10 p.m. and you're in a parking garage and all you can smell is gas fumes and you're eating stale pizza, and Susan is down at the end of the ramp doing jujitsu kicks, spinning around and ready to go."

Superpowered people as celebrities is another big hook from the Powers comics that Huston is emphasizing. Retro Girl (played by Michelle Forbes) is timeless and ageless, and with her Huston is exploring the idea in show business that women "age out" much earlier than men.

"I love the idea of a mature Retro Girl, someone who's been at the top forever and ever and ever, and having that not just be an internal thing but be something we're fully aware of the first time we see her," Huston says.

"Like with all genre stuff, it's a chance to work out (stuff) that you're curious about and interested in in the real world and then put it into a form that is larger than life."

Bendis admits that it's been a "very interesting journey" bringing Powers to the screen. The comic debuted in 2000 and was optioned by Sony Pictures a year later. In 2009, FX greenlit a pilot, which was filmed with Jason Patric and Lucy Punch as the leads in 2011, but after a few years of retooling, FX gave it up and Sony jumped at the chance to put it on its fledgling PlayStation Network.

"We're getting the best of both worlds," Bendis says. "We're getting a network-budgeted show, and we're getting to dive in as dark and deep as we want to go."

He jokes that after the first table read with the new cast, he wanted to go lie down because "it completely freaked me out" seeing his characters come to life.

"I attempt a legitimate amount of zen about it. And then every once in a while, it'll just hit me in the face when I least expect it."