Macho, un-PC and unapologetic: Peacemaker is modern America's ideal superhero

At any other point in the history of film and television, James Gunn would be plying his trade on lurid back-alley pulp – and loving every minute of it. But this former protégé of schlockmeister Lloyd Kaufman came of age as a director just as comic-book blockbusters were on the rise, which means he’s now regularly entrusted with budgets that would have made Cecil B DeMille shriek.

Fortunately, the results have been terrific. In 2014, his Guardians of the Galaxy proved there could be more to the Marvel Universe than updating and repackaging established brands, while his thunderously entertaining 2021 reboot of The Suicide Squad was trash with substance – the kind of film for which you turn off your brain, only to realise the switch has been stealthily flipped back on again while you’ve been gurgling at the guts and gunk.

His eight-part TV series Peacemaker (Sky Max) pulls off the same trick. Picking up more or less exactly where The Suicide Squad tied things up, it’s a crass, gunge-smothered action romp and a moving drama about the death of the American Century: come for the thick, gooey substances, stay for the substance. (It’s also a riotous workplace comedy into the bargain, on which more in a moment.) John Cena reprises his role as the titular beef-brained mercenary – real name Christopher Smith – who has again been let out of prison in order to assist a shadowy government department with an outlandish black op. This one’s called Operation Butterfly, and even the broadest details are at first amusingly opaque.

In The Suicide Squad, Peacemaker’s thoughtless loyalty to the patriotic cause was one of his defining traits, and ended up ultimately turning him against his more anarchically minded comrades. Here, Gunn further chips away at the square-jawed facade, introducing a poisonously cruel father (a perfectly cast Robert Patrick) to provide a jumbo dose of formative trauma, and situating the action across a pointedly unsexy string of suburban and rural locales.

If Marvel’s Captain America is the US’s fantasy self-image in superhero form, then Peacemaker is the unflinching 2022 self-portrait: a preening, pumped-up, ideologically incoherent egomaniac whose usefulness as an ally looks a good generation out of date. Yet you still can’t help but love him, in spite of all of the above.

And Cena is intensely loveable. Christopher/Peacemaker’s un-PC humour and macho prowess often give way to a surprising soulfulness that’s beautifully played by the former wrestler, and while the swerves from mayhem into pathos are often breakneck, they’re always expertly steered. The same could be said for the show at large, which owes much of its addictiveness to Gunn and his cast’s commitment to keeping their audience off-guard.

In episode one, a brisk sex scene segues into a preposterously drawn-out fight scene; in four, the impending appearance of a gorilla is leadenly foreshadowed, yet its eventual arrival and fate are both hilariously unforeseeable. The plot is an off-the-peg Invasion of the Body Snatchers riff with added daddy issues: what makes it such fun is watching Peacemaker and his colleagues muddle their way through it.

The whole ensemble – a sharply drawn, sitcom-esque crew – are re-introduced at the start of every episode via a joyous deadpan dance number which plays the opening credits: the song is Do Ya Wanna Taste It by a Norwegian glam metal quartet called Wig Wam, and with every rendition I found myself beaming as each member stomped and twirled back into view.

On the government side are cool, no-nonsense Harcourt (Jennifer Holland), snarky yet sensitive Economos (Steve Agee), wary newcomer Adebayo (Danielle Brooks), and taciturn leader Murn (Chukwudi Iwuji). Unofficially, meanwhile, there’s also Peacemaker’s unhinged disciple Vigilante (Bridgerton’s Freddie Stroma) – a superhero by hobby alone, who strikes you as the sort who’d be on about five different registers if he wasn’t keeping himself occupied.

Yet even when Christopher’s father suits up as a sort of white supremacist Iron Man, Peacemaker wastes no energy explaining or excusing itself. In its world, superheroes are just part of the snugly fitting fabric of everyday life. A local police detective (Annie Chang) even dismissively describes the entire field as “capes—”, which online types may recognise as an uncomplimentary term for comic-book-based media at its most derivative. Gunn’s series raucously outflanks the insult.

Peacemaker is on Sky Max at 10pm tonight and available to watch now on Sky Go/NOW