A new E4 series called Misfits you say? About a group of young delinquents doing community service?

We’ve not been this put off a new TV series since the Bad Girls pilot. In fact, the likelihood of a good series coming from E4 is akin to that of finding a hen’s tooth, or Tess Daly’s soul.

Imagine the disquiet and shock which consumed us when we saw the first episode of this teen-insert genre here and discovered it’s actually quite good. Maybe Tess Daly has a soul after all.*

To get the comparison cliché out of the way, Misfits can be best described as Dead Set meets Heroes meets Shameless. There’s certainly a comic book feel to it à la Heroes, despite writer Howard Overman maintaining ignorance of the illustration laden literature.

In this television programme, a number of actors pretend to possess a different personality to their own, in a number of staged situations and circumstances. Their words are also not their own, they are given to them beforehand by the aforementioned writer, Howard Overman. In the opening episode this group of young, mostly unknown actors pretend to perform manual tasks in order to fulfil the community service aspect of their respective characters’ sentencing. An artificially created storm interrupts them, and through a combination of wind, rain, and CG effects, they are struck by lightning. None of them are harmed – on the contrary, they awake with some super powers. They are bestowed with the ability to hear thoughts, turn back time, become invisible, and to instil in people an intense sexual desire.

This wee acting conglomerate is lead by Robert Sheehan, a young Irishman best known for his role as BJ in the excellent Red Riding series. Robert (or Nathan, as he purports to be in this) provides plentiful comic relief in the Irish craic style popularised by Les Dennis‘ impression of Graham Norton in Extras.

In series such as this or Heroes, realism and grittiness are highly sought-after commodities. Such things are mostly unobtainable in a fantasy scenario such as this, so a substantial amount of credit is due to this relatively inexperienced writer. Howard has also successfully captured the often foul dialogue of teenagers while retaining enough clarity in order for it to be understood by a wider audience.

An impressive social media campaign will be running alongside the series to both accompany and expand on the story arc via Twitter, Facebook and YouTube etc. To make this worthwhile to viewers, those who pay close attention will be rewarded with a character who won’t be revealed on TV till episode six, amongst other things.

All in all, this looks set to be one of those popular ones.

Misfits starts on E4 on Thurs Nov 12 at 10pm

*She doesn’t.

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We knew she had it in her, sure. But now it’s here and, lord, it is beautiful. How much of a stroppy mare is Hayden Panettiere? Only stroppy enough to try and get Milo Ventimiglia sacked from Heroes because he split up with her last month, that’s how much.

Or maybe Hayden Panettiere has got Milo Ventimiglia sacked from Heroes. Or maybe Hayden Panettiere was sacked from Heroes instead. Nobody watches Heroes any more, so nobody really knows.

You have no idea how grateful we are to Hayden Panettiere at the moment. The young gossip starlets of yesteryear are all fading away – Lindsay’s become a drab lesbian, Paris has finally realised that the joke has always been on her and making fun of Britney feels a little bit like poking an orhaned donkey in the eye – and we needed someone young, pretty, self-important and woefully lacking in self-awareness to fill the void. Hayden Panettiere, you’ve done us proud.

We always knew that Hayden Panettiere had been building up to this moment – like in 2007 when she pissed off a legion of Japanese fishermen, and in 2008 when she released a solo single even worse than Paris Hilton’s – but now she’s blossomed into womanhood in the most spectacular way.

We suppose we’ve got Milo Ventimiglia, Hayden’s ex-boyfriend and Heroes co-star – to thank for this. If Milo hadn’t been old enough to be her father when they got together romantically, then he’d have never grown tired of Hayden Panettiere’s hard-partying ways, and then he’d have never split up with her.

And if Milo Ventimiglia had never split up with Hayden Panettiere, then she wouldn’t currently be acting like such a raging bitchzilla towards him on the set of Heroes. OK! reports:

Heroes’ Hayden Panettiere has decided to take her bitter breakup with co-star Milo Ventimiglia to the small screen. Hayden, 19, is trying to get Milo, 31, kicked off of the show, according to a mutual friend. “She refuses to be on the set at the same time as him,” the pal tells OK!. “She is making it difficult for everyone involved.” As for Milo, “He’s not going to play any games or stoop to her level.”

Silly Hayden Panettiere. This is incredibly shortsighted of her. She’s sending a message to producers across America that she’s impossible to deal with if somebody no longer wants to sleep with her. And since the only way she’ll ever get any work is precisely because producers want to sleep with her, she’s shot herself in the foot somewhat.

But how will Hayden Panettiere’s on-set tantrum affect Heroes? We’re not sure. To be honest we just realised that Heroes wasn’t cancelled 18 months ago and we’re a bit confused.

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That’s right – were. Fans of freaky relationships between teenagers and much, much older – almost inappropriately older – full-grown adult men should probably sit down for this. Hayden Panettiere and Milo Ventimiglia from Heroes have just split up.

Apparently Hayden Panettiere and Milo Ventimiglia have split up because they’re ‘in different places’. But at least now Hayden Panettiere and Milo Ventimiglia can move onto people nearer their own ages – so Madonna’s adopted African son and the dusty old knight from the end of Indiana Jones 3, then.

If you like Heroes, then… actually, no, wait. Nobody likes Heroes any more, do they? Most people would rather stab themselves in the face with a pen than watch a new episode of Heroes. Let’s start this paragraph again.

If you’re aware of the existence of a television show called Heroes that used to be quite good but quickly turned into a fat sack of animal testes, then you’ll be aware of Hayden Panettiere and Milo Ventimiglia. Hayden plays the invincible cheerleader Claire, while Milo plays a floppy-haired nutsack whose superpower seems to involve whining a lot.

But even though Heroes is basically unwatchable toss, it provided the perfect environment for love to blossom between Hayden Panettiere and Milo Ventimiglia. It didn’t matter that she was a teenager and he was a man in his thirties, nor that she played his schoolgirl niece in Heroes, nor that if the relationship had happened a few months earlier he’d be put on some kind of permanent register and chased around everywhere by a violent torch-wielding mob – Hayden Panettiere and Milo Ventimiglia were in love, and nothing could stop it.

Well, nothing but the yawning age-chasm between them, obviously. Because now it’s emerged that Hayden Panettiere and Milo Ventimiglia have finally split up. The New York Daily News reports:

“It was a lifestyle conflict,” an insider told Us Weekly magazine, suggesting that the 12-year age gap between Panettiere, 19, and Ventimiglia, 31, may have been a factor in their split. “They were in very different places,” added the source. “[Panettiere] is young. She likes to go out in the Hollywood scene and that’s not his style.” Ventimiglia meanwhile, “has been concentrating on work on his production company.”

Although Hayden Panettiere and Milo Ventimiglia have remained on friendly terms, the question of how the split will affect Heroes is another matter entirely. We’re particularly looking forward to the future plotline where Peter Petrelli rushes to save Claire from certain death, only for Claire to start laying into him about why he never wants to go to any parties with her and how she should have listened to her mother. Unless that’s already happened. It’s not like we actually watch Heroes, is it?

But at least Hayden Panettiere and Milo Ventimiglia can move on romantically now. And, what with Hayden’s miraculous ability to instantaneously recover from any injuries she sustains, it looks like she might have a future career lined up as Chris Brown’s girlfriend.

Oh, alright – allegedly.

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And that spells a big uh-oh for Heroes, because both of those apply equally to it. The latter has done since around the end of the first season, but the former has only just happened. Heroes co-executive producers Jeph Loeb and Jesse Alexander have been given the boot by NBC in an attempt to make the show decent again.

There’s no word on who’ll replace Loeb and Alexander on Heroes, but we think it’ll be us. We have a three-point Heroes resuscitation plan raring to go, and it’s unbeatable. 1) Reduce the cast down to a key core of characters, 2) ditch all the time travel, and 3) bring in a new character who’s a cartoon time-travelling giraffe who speaks in rhymes like a rapper and has magical sunglasses. Kids still like rap, right?

Remember when everyone liked Heroes? You have to cast your mind back quite a way, but they did. When it started, Heroes was like Lost, except that it answered questions instead of wallowing around examining its own navel all the time.

Public opinion about Heroes has changed a little since then – it’s now like Lost except that nobody watches it, none of the characters are good, the stories are all rubbish, the acting is weak and all in all sitting through an episode is so pointless that you may as well spend an hour trying to push a goose up a badger’s bottom. Generally speaking.

It’s clear that Heroes needs something big to happen to change and, since NBC appears to be ignoring our calls to turn it into The Hayden Panettiere Rides A Mechanical Rodeo Bull In Slow Motion In A Swimsuit Hour, it’s decided to give the shove to a couple of co-executive producers instead. Variety reports:

Big shakeup on the staff of NBC’s “Heroes” came down on Sunday with the axing of co-exec producers Jesse Alexander and Jeph Loeb. Both had been with the show since its first season. It’s understood that Alexander and Loeb were let go because of Peacock execs’ frustration with the creative direction of the show.

It’s absolutely right that NBC should be concerned about the creative direction of Heroes. If the show continues to slide in quality at its present rate then we expect the entire second half of this season to consist of nothing but Mohinder waffling endless half-sentences about destiny and God and genetics to a photograph of a duckling. Actually, we take that back – we’d much prefer to watch that than Heroes as it currently is.

But, hey, if anyone can turn Heroes around, it’s the network executives. Give them a few million dollars to focus group the problem and we’re sure they’ll get Heroes back on its feet.

Well, it won’t be Heroes as such – it’ll be a new show set in space, and all the characters will be kung-fu girls in bikinis, and the end of each episode will be decided by text-vote, and it’ll be called Heroez and afterwards there’ll be a real-life reality show all about the dramatic ups and downs of Hayden Panittiere and Milo Ventimiglia’s relationship called Heroez: Unzipped – but kids like shows that have a ‘Z’ instead of an ‘S’ at the end, right?

Before turning their attentions back to Deal or No Deal and falling asleep for the rest of the week. Bless ‘em.

And maybe they’re on to something. We have Jessica Simpson describing Scarlett Johansson as unbelievably talented; we have uneducated bloggers posting showbiz articles that infuriate the intense-grammar-loving public of America; and now the word ‘genius’ – once saved for people like Newton, Darwin, Einstein and Darren Anderton – has been used to describe Paris bloody Hilton.

According to Contact Music, Heroes star Hayden Panettiere has said of Paris:

“She’s a nice girl and a lot brighter than people give her credit (for), but no one sees her like that because she plays this character all the time. She’s actually a marketing genius.”

What’s that? It’s all been a marketing ploy? She’s been fooling us with her faux-foolishness this whole time! D’oh!

Shame we missed the meeting where she proposed to the board that, in order for her shooting-star celebrity to become a cash cow, she planned to record herself performing the most erection-repellent sex tape of all time (honestly, you’d be easier aroused lying dead at the local Warcraft convention with Justin Timberlake’s sexy-noise pouring through the speakers as Margaret Thatcher rips her long-johns asunder and squats down above your rigamortified mush. It’s about as sexy as that. Not that we’ve watched it! OK, we watched it, but we didn’t inhale).

To be fair, though, it was a very successful meeting indeed, and now everybody knows who she is and what she’s about (clue: It’s the same thing Seinfeld based a whole show on).

The same can’t be said, however, for the meeting where she proposed that she wants to get MTV to find her a new best friend – forever. A project which, as we’ve already reported, was doomed from the start.

And – God damn it! – if Hayden Panettiere thinks Paris Hilton is a genius then what must she think of herself? That surely puts her IQ on par with that of a dildo – one far too big to fit anywhere effectively.

Stay tuned for more genius showbiz articles, coming to you all day, every day, at hecklerspray.

Read More – Hayden Panettiere: Panettiere – Hilton Is A Genius

They are all mouth and no trousers. Or as our sweet old grandma used to say, "they are all fart and no shit." Anyway, you get the idea. They're the action heroes in film that you know in the real world would not stand up to much. In fact, without the CGI and the body double they are nothing.

Now, movies are all about pretend. We understand that. But there are limits, right? There is a point when your imagination stands up and says 'wait a minute'. And here at hecklerspray we feel it is our duty to expose such charlatans. For the good of mankind, of course. Oh, and if any of the following want to question it, we will be waiting outside. Bring it on!

Behold, the Not-So-Magnificent Seven…

7. Mark Wahlberg
We're just not buying it. Ok, he may have the roughened face of Britney's Spear's wizard-sleeved vagina, but he is about four foot tall.

6. Leonardo Di Caprio
How can you take a man with a sprout for a head seriously as an action hero. Yet, he keeps getting these roles, somehow. We particularly love the fact that he feels compelled to grow bumfluff around his chin to make him look harder.

5. Elijah Wood
Now, it hurts to say this because we love Lord of the Rings and especially 'nasty hobbittess'. And we know it's all about how even the smallest person can make a difference, but come on, Tolkien. Who are you trying to kid? Forget Mordor, try walking down Brixton or the Bronx with your fancy ring, and let's see how far you get.

4. Ethan Hawke
Are you serious? He is another who feels compelled to grow bumfluff to make him look harder but it only manages to make him look like a 14-year-old kid. Could anyone really be intimidated by Ethan Hawke? We've seen more meat on a jockey's whip.

3. Daniel Radcliffe
We can only assume that the only reason Voldemort didn't snap his neck was that he didn't want to hit a kid with glasses. Or maybe he just felt sorry for the geek. Yes, he can probably turn us into a pile of turd or something, but getting the better of him is easy. Just snap his magic wand, and we don't mean the one he got out in that play where he has 'relations with a horse'.

2. Nicolas Cage
Look, the guy is a joke. Why should any self-respecting baddie get beaten up by a man with ridiculous hair, the body of whippet and a penchant for Elvis?

1. Tom Cruise
Put it this way, you have more to fear from the hobbit – he's taller. Mission Impossible? Hardly.

And, like the old saying goes, adorability loves adorability. That's why Hayden Panettiere and Milo Ventimiglia are totally doing it with each other. That's not exactly news – a relationship between the two of them has been rumoured for months – but with the news that Milo has met Hayden's grandparents, it looks like things have just become official. Sweet, no? So sweet that we're almost able to overlook the fact that Milo Ventimiglia is 30 years and Hayden Panettiere is just 18 and that's a little tiny bit creepy.

Almost.

When you work on a show like Heroes, you get a lot of time to fraternise with your co-stars. That's because the average Heroes episode is made up of 40% babbling on about that virus that nobody cares about, 25% Hiro pulling constipated faces and 58% godawful pseudo-spiritual voiceovers. Since that adds up to 123%, it doesn't leave much for the actors to actually do.

And if you're either Hayden Panettiere or Milo Ventimiglia, that gives you plenty of time to get it on with each other. And break the law in Japan. But mainly get it on with each other. 

Ever since they were spotted canoodling at a concert a few months ago, reports were rife that Hayden Panettiere (the self-repairing low-cut cheerleader) and Milo Ventimiglia (her whining haircut uncle) were a couple, but the lack of an official confirmation and the jolting realisation that he's old enough to be her father meant that nobody really paid much attention to them.

But now it's become unavoidable. A family friend has let slip to People that Milo recently spent time with Hayden's family in New York and everyone loves the adorable floppy-haired bastard:

"Hayden's mom adores Milo. She thinks he's so cute. She tells her friends that he's her boyfriend. She's very proud. He's even met her grandparents. He fits in perfectly with the family. Milo jokes around with her little brother. They're buddies… He really takes care of her, even down to the little things like giving her a back massage and going with her to work things."  

That's a true sign of commitment – going with Hayden to work things. Forget that they both have the same job on the same show at the same time and that him 'going to work things with her' is exactly the same as him 'going to work', that's still sort of sweet.

Since there's still been no official confirmation of Hayden and Milo's relationship, we have no idea about serious they are about each other. We hope it's completely serious, though, because we want nothing more than to see a 30-year-old man from a TV show marry his barely-legal co-star who plays his schoolgirl niece. We're welling up at the very thought of it right now, in fact.

Read more:

Milo Ventimiglia & Hayden Panettiere Are an Item – People

It isn't going well. Laidlow, hammered on alcopops, has thrown up in Lindseth's sleeping bag and made him cry. Laverty tripped over the guy rope and dropped all our eggs on a cowpat. C J Davies keeps walking into a tree head-first again and again, convinced he'll be able to move it with the power of his mind and nobody has seen Annette since she went off to film that witch's hut. Only Stuart Heritage has managed to rise above this pathetic scene. Really, he's like some sort of hero or something.

Anyway, want to know what our favourite TV shows of the year were? Good, they're all here…

Stuart Heritage

I was tempted to plump for Tribe here, but didn't for the simple reason that Bruce Parry doesn't break out in whimsical song twice an episode. That isn't a problem with Flight Of The Conchords – the HBO remake of the duo's BBC radio series. Funny, understated and – as proved by the song Leggy Blonde – weirdly touching, Brett and Jermaine from Flight Of The Conchords are smarter, funnier, better-looking and better dressed than I am, and the simple fact that I don't hate them for it speaks volumes.

C J Davies

The Wire Season Three – broadcast a couple of years back, released to the masses on DVD this year – remains one of the best television shows ever made, and word is that the fourth season continues this fine tradition. In terms of new stuff, it admittedly does feel like it's been a year of wavering standards. 24 was notably below par this time around, even for a series that prides itself on far-fetched unreality. Family Guy has been missing the mark with alarming inaccuracy of late, and Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip promised to develop into something interesting but then went and got itself cancelled. Oh, and Heroes is just a big pile of shit, isn't it, really?

Hip-hip-hurrahs then to our two winners, one of which went out with nothing resembling a bang. The Sopranos ended in typically uncompromising style, dividing opinions sharply between pretentious non-ending and work of utter genius (hint: it's the latter). And Lost has made a remarkable recovery from a lacklustre second season, playing out its third year with humour, suspense and intelligence beyond any of its contemporaries.

Meanwhile in Britain, Rosemary And Thyme is set to begin it's six-fucking-millionth series.

Shawn Lindseth

The Best TV show of '08, in my humble opinion – and I have 75% of a GED so my opinion really counts – is 30 Rock. They were on their game during season one, but season two even more so. Anyone catch that Greenzo episode when Al Gore had to run out and save a whale?

Or what about when Kenneth was obligated to seduce Tracy Jordan's wife, and he did so by telling her he was a real good sex person?

Yes, in Shawn Lindseth's humble middle-school educated opinion, 30 Rock takes the '07 sitcom cake. 

Chris Laverty

Not just the best show of the year, but now one of my favourite shows of all time: Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

Less hyped than Heroes and with a cast largely over the age of 30, this show never really stood a chance.

Literate and moving, funny and meaningful – this is the kind of programme that nobody you know actually watches; especially not anymore, because it was cancelled with criminal haste after just one series.

Matthew Laidlow

It has to be the Jeremy Kyle show by far. There really is no better way to wake up on a morning in a hangover state to see Britain’s morons being paraded around for my amusement. Such brilliant tales of 'My daughter's a 14-year-old smack head' and 'I’m the village bike' never fail to make me laugh. Where they get them from I don’t know, but it’s like the Jeremy Kyle show is single-handedly picking out and showing us all of God’s hideous mistakes. We all make errors from time to time, I guess. At least ITV has the chance to exploit this for an hour or so every day. All it needs is a ridiculously easy phone-in competition prize of a 20p Pick And Mix at Woolworths and it has the makings of the greatest TV show ever.

Annette Hyde

I can now somewhat confidently admit to my love of Heroes. I was ashamed at first. What was to come next? Two and a Half Men curiosity? A subtle regard for Grey’s Anatomy? But, I can now admit that I am a Heroes supporter. My main reason for choosing Heroes is that if I could heal myself like Hayden Panettiere’s character I wouldn’t have to panic wondering if I contracted a deadly disease after accidentally sticking myself with a needle at work… or needles. Yep. It’s happened more than once.

Next week – our wishes for 2008. But leave your favourite TV shows of 2007 in the comment box below. If that’s what you want to do.

The first of the two episodes this week promised to start with a bang, quite literally. When we last left the titular band of heroes Peter Petrelli was about to go nuclear, thereby splattering his floppy hair all over the place. The episode closed with him telling his niece Claire to shoot him, exciting and promising stuff – or so you’d think. It seems the writers are so desperate to keep their audience that they seem to assume that we have the attention span of an ADHD kid who has drunk two litres of coke. What we get is Peter just turning around and saying he’s OK and then they plod along onto their next adventure. Cliff-hangers in television are good, and Heroes has had some corkers, but when it contributes nothing to the plot or characters it feels like an unnecessary gimmick.

So we’re not off to a good start. It was the Heroes penultimate episode though, so the rest of it had to be tightly structured. So next we see that Hiro (Time Traveller) and Ando (Idiot), have just failed to kill Sylar (Bad Guy) and has had his sword broken. Things are bleak – how are they going to fix the sword that’s 500 years old? By looking in the Yellow Pages, obviously, for the ancient sword fixer listed who for some reason uses the same symbol that is on their sword. That is quite the coincidence! 

One thing that worked really well in this episode is the inner conflict of Nathan Petrelli, the brother of Peter, who must make the moral decision whether to let his brother explode or not for what he’s being told is for the 'greater good'. Throughout the two episodes it's unclear whether or not Nathan will use his chin for good or evil and its compelling and exciting to see him go through the motions as he gets manipulated. The people pulling his strings put in good turns and were generally menacing and intriguing with their misty pasts. His own mother being the most vindictive with the look like she's gone two rounds with Mike Tyson, if he was wearing Botox needles on his fists as apposed to gloves. The second puppet-master is the superbly-played Linderman. Malcolm McDowell interacts with the characters with such authority and charisma that it’s a shame that it doesn’t seem like he’ll be returning to the series in the next season, especially considering all the mystery and intrigue his character leaves behind, along with his brain.

Other characters doing their bit are Nikki and D.L, trying to get back their son from Linderman, using their abilities of being annoying and whiny to go about their business. Cop Parkman and ass-kicking machine Bennet trying to find a mutant tracking system and kill it. The tracking system turns out being a cute little girl, who's being protected by muppet-headed Dr Suresh. Also bad guy Sylar turns up killing original nuclear man Ted and decides for shits and giggles to try and blow up New York himself, as you do.

There were two scenes that stopped this episode slipping into mediocrity, which won't be ruined here. One is the best death ever seen on television and the other is a cold-blooded turn by the coolest character in the series (who ironically doesn’t possess any powers).  

By the end of the episode, all the characters in the first part are on their way to the final meeting point and it all feels like one giant cliff-hanger that’s building up throughout the episode. The worst of these being Ando, who possesses no powers, deciding to go after Sylar himself with a sword and his spiky hair. Great thinking, another cliff-hanger for the sake of it. 

The next episode was more promising, obviously there's no more foreplay – we’re down to the good stuff now. We get treated straight away with Dr Exposition explaining with voice-over something about life that is meant to be poignant but instead has the effect of making us want the little girl next to him to get shot so we can see him use a facial expression that ranges beyond the mildly bewildered.

Straight to the Ando/Sylar confrontation and it plays out as you’d imagine. He gets there, gets his ass kicked, Hiro saves him and Sylar doesn’t care because he’s too evil to bother. Other plot points are resolved so they can all meet up for the anticipated final smack down. Little girl gets spared because she’s cute and it's primetime television and putting one between the eyes of a nine-year-old would go down as well as Paris Hilton presenting University Challenge. Peter and Claire then turn up to save the city, and D.L and Nikki move into another corridor to bleed over the walls some more.

The most promising aspect of the episode is the fight that we are promised at the end between Peter and Sylar. As both characters make their way to the meeting point we are treated to some intriguing and compelling scenes. Notably which side Nathan will be on at the end? Will he let Peter die?

Peter also travels back in time and meets dead Shaft who appeared earlier in the series. This scene works particularly well as it gives a forgotten character a new and mysterious twist.

Also Molly, the spared little girl from earlier, makes an awesome statement telling us that there’s another man she can see who is far worse than the ‘Boogeyman’ – an enticing line of dialogue that will hopefully pay off in the next series.  

This leads to the final smackdown between Peter and Sylar, something that some might argue the whole series has been leading up to. We don’t know who decided this scene would be satisfying for the fans but we hope their paycheque bounced – in fact we hope the paycheque was made of concrete and bounced off their head! The scene was lacklustre; they turn up, Peter gets punched a couple of times, Sylar gets hit by a parking meter by Nikki who then wanders off, and then Peter punches Sylar and that’s about it! No super powers, which you’d think would be the most logical thing, just a couple of punches. It’s so crap even Sylar seems to be laughing about the absurdity of it. Things finish off with Sylar getting off and Peter about to explode. Claire can’t kill Peter and says “There has to be another way”, then strangely Nathan flies from a mile away, lands and says “There is, Claire” (Nathan appearing now to have super hearing as well it seems!). Then Peter and Nathan have some brotherly love and fly off living happily ever after… or not, because they blow up! A satisfying and well-acted ending for the character Nathan.

With the fate of those two hanging in the balance, Molly’s evil man, Shaft's magic and Hiro’s surprise location, it sets up for a promising second season. In fact this episode works best when setting up mysterious and cliff-hangers that don’t feel forced. Heroes is at its best when the characters and situations make the mysterious not the other way round.

This episode was a letdown for a series that had so much promise and moments of true greatness. The writers at times don’t seem to know what to do with characters and then just put them in stupid situations. The second season seems to have promise though and perhaps if they stop relying on cheap tricks and trim some of the useless characters, (I don’t even understand Nikki’s power? Unusually straight teeth?), it could be a consistently great television series. With the decent and promising end of the finale though we should at least have a great beginning of the second series! Or have they tricked me again? I feel so used!

[story by David A. Scarborough]

However, if you're from Japan then Hayden Panettiere is a high-profile fugitive who hates Japanese culture to such an extent that she's in a huge amount of trouble for it. Admittedly that's because the part of Japanese culture that Hayden Panettiere hates the most is the way they slaughter dolphins – and her surfboard-based pre-dawn attempts to disrupt a dolphin cull last month has resulted in a Japanese arrest warrant being placed on Hayden Panettiere's head. Forget 'save the cheerleader, save the world'; this is a case of 'arrest the cheerleader, curtail a potentially knotty international diplomatic incident'.

Also, it's thought that – following Hayden Panettiere's Japanese arrest warrant – the schizophrenic porno girl from Heroes who used to be in Dawson's Creek has decided to keep her controversial anti-Hello Kitty sentiments to herself for now.

Of all the western TV shows ever made, only two have really stood out for their love of Japanese culture. One was Tenko – which concerned itself with the ancient Japanese practise of putting bits of glass in Stephanie Beacham's dinner – and the other is Heroes, thanks to the break-out success of lovable Japanese geek Hiro. Heroes loves Japan.

But Japan doesn't love Heroes back, because the cute cheerleader girl from the show keeps trying to stop them killing dolphins all the time. And now that cute cheerleader girl – Hayden Panettiere – is going to get arrested for it.

The story started last month when, along with five of her friends, Hayden Panettiere paddled out to sea on a surfboard to to try and disrupt attempts by local fishermen to slaughter a bunch of dolphins; only to become trapped by the fishermen, who contained her with their boat propellers and pushed her with sticks until they got to kill the dolphins like they wanted to. At the time Hayden Panettiere described the dolphins as:

"So pretty. They were teddy bears in the water. They slowed down and started gathering in the net towards us. This little baby popped its head out and looked at us and all of us just wanted to cut them out of the nets and set them free.”

However, so infuriated are the Japanese by Hayden Panettiere's actions that they've placed an arrest warrant on her head. Although Hayden was stunned into silence when she was told of this on live Australian TV yesterday, she's since put out this statement:

“Obviously this issue has generated defensive behaviour on the part of both the Japanese Authorities and Fishermen,” she said in the statement. “I have grown up hearing – and adhering to – this phrase: ‘condemnation without investigation dooms one to everlasting ignorance.’ We must unite as a world to solve our increasing international environmental crises. We can no longer hide [behind] out-dated, senseless cultural traditions and lazy, bad habits that are resulting in the annihilation of our planet’s resources and the extinction of our species.”

Of course, it could be argued that Hayden Panettiere's actions and statements show a lack of understanding of the greater issue here. For example, if it wasn't for the dolphin cull, Japanese fishermen wouldn't have a livelihood. Plus, the Japanese Fisheries ministry maintains that the dolphin slaughter is done in a highly-sustainable way. And also, Hayden should be thankful to the Japanese for killing all the dolphins, because if those buggers ever grow legs and thumbs and decide to invade dry land then that's us done for, buddy.

But it's unlikely that Hayden Panettiere will ever willingly go to Japan to get arrested, so all of this is moot. And that leaves the Japanese government with two real options here – either they can capture Hayden Panettiere and ship her off to Japan in a cargo ship to torture her for two years like the Chinese did with Jack Bauer that one time, or they can redub all the imported episodes of Heroes so that Hayden's voice sounds a bit stupid. We're fine with either of those.