Comment on DC Comics Brings a New Hero to Television in Constantine

There's one true antihero in DC Comics' colorful TV invasion, a scruffy blond British bloke rocking a trench coat. Despite - or perhaps because of - Constantine's character flaws, comic book fans have faithfully followed the character's macabre misadventures in a world filled with demons, ghosts, vampires, and monsters since 1985, when he was introduced in The Saga of the Swamp Thing. Suspect Behavior, a Welsh actor with a Royal Shakespeare Company pedigree, beat out hundreds of rivals to land the iconic role in its first TV incarnation. There are a lot of moving targets when you bring an established property to television, especially one with such a loyal fan base," executive producer Daniel Cerone says, "but we've felt consistently confident in the fact that we had the right guy. Many fans who caught the trailer online or who watched the pilot at this summer's San Diego Comic-Con agree, praising the actor for both his working-class British accent and spiky blond 'do. Haunted by his fatal error, he's sequestered in an English psychiatric hospital when a message from the beyond spurs him to travel to Atlanta (where the show is filmed) to help Liv Aberdine (Lucy Griffiths), an old friend's daughter who is besieged by demons. There's a fine line that we'll have to toe to keep an audience from hating Constantine, says Ryan, but I think the key to that is, though there's huge darkness and torment facing him, he has this edgy humor and ironic wit, a defense mechanism for all that crap that goes on in his life.