Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman 30th Anniversary complete rewatch thread

[Benoit Blanc]

It premiered 30 years ago THIS MINUTE!

'Lois & Clark' at 30: How the Superman series led to a new era of superhero TV

When Mark Pedowitz, chief executive of the CW, left the network last year, some fans of worlds where men wear masks and capes and women can fly saw it as the death of, well, Superman.

Under Pedowitz’s reign, the basic cable channel went from a harborer of flashy teen dramas like “Gossip Girl” to the headquarters of series based on comic book characters from the DC Universe — ones that happened to be owned by then-parent company Warner Bros. (In 2022, Nexstar acquired a controlling stake.) Shows like “Arrow,” “Supergirl,” “The Flash” and, the lone survivor, “Superman and Lois,” are all produced by partners Greg Berlanti and Sarah Schechter’s Berlanti Productions and all rely on a solid formula of stories about superheroes saving the world mixed with the office romances and familial dramas associated with nighttime soaps.

But 30 years ago, another TV show helped lay the groundwork for these types of superhero series: ABC’s “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman,” which premiered Sept. 12, 1993. It saw comics’ infamous power couple as 20-something reporters working together to investigate stories for their esteemed newspaper, the Daily Planet, and take down corruption in the city of Metropolis. In reviewing the pilot, then-Times TV critic Howard Rosenberg described it as “relentlessly witty” and “a series that flies.”

S01E01 Pilot