ABC’s Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman ran four seasons and 87 episodes, from September 12, 1993, to June 14, 1997. Deborah Joy LeVine created it. The show made a bet most superhero television before it had avoided: that the man in the cape mattered less than the man in the newsroom.
That bet paid off often enough to be worth remembering. It also produced a series that never quite decided what it wanted to be, and the seams show.
Trailer, via Dean Cain Gallery.
Dean Cain Was Nearly Too Young
Casting Dean Cain as Clark Kent and Superman was not obvious. LeVine thought he was too young. After Cain finished his audition and left the room, she snapped at the casting director, “We’re casting Superman, not Superboy!”
We’re casting Superman, not Superboy!
LeVine and the casting director then auditioned more than a hundred prospects. None stood out as perfect for the role. Cain was included among the handful who got a callback. Kevin Sorbo was the runner-up and was nearly cast until the producers changed their minds and went with Cain.
What settled it, according to LeVine, was Cain’s reading of the scene where Clark talks with Jonathan Kent about feeling he does not fit in. That is the right tell for this show. Lois & Clark was never going to win on flight sequences or fistfights. It wins when Clark is a person with a problem.
Two Reporters and One Disguise
The premise reverses the standard Superman arrangement. Developed for television by LeVine, the series loosely followed the modern origin set by writer John Byrne, in which Clark Kent is the true personality and Superman is the disguise. The relationship between Lois and Clark carries as much weight as the adventures of Clark’s alter ego.
The show opens in 1993. Clark is 27, has left his job as newspaper editor of the Smallville Press, and moves to Metropolis to interview at the Daily Planet under editor Perry White. He meets photographer Jimmy Olsen and gossip columnist Cat Grant.
Metropolis is more vibrant than Smallville and more dangerous. Clark worries about using his powers openly without exposing his extraterrestrial nature and ruining any chance at a normal life. So he wears a costume and works in an alternate identity. He also has to use his powers in secret, often with no chance to change into costume discreetly.
Soon he is partnered with star reporter Lois Lane. He falls for her. She falls for Superman instead, names him, and dismisses Clark as a dimwitted and sentimental hick.
That asymmetry is the engine of the early seasons, and it is a better engine than most superhero shows of the period had. Clark excels at human interest stories. Lois exposes political scandals and criminal operations, which puts her in perilous situations that Superman has to pull her out of. In time, she sees his intelligence and competence as a reporter, along with his virtues, and they become friends.
Perry White and the Elvis Catchphrase
The supporting cast does more work than the premise requires, and one decision explains why. After Lane Smith was cast as Perry White, LeVine replaced the character’s comics catchphrase with “Great shades of Elvis!” She thought it implausible that a Southerner would ever say “Great Caesar’s ghost!” That turned Perry into a consummate Elvis Presley fan, and it gave the Daily Planet scenes a texture the scripts otherwise lacked.
John Shea was cast as Lex Luthor for his looks and charm as a romantic leading man. LeVine wanted a Luthor who could serve as a romantic rival for Superman, not just a physical threat. That is a sharper idea than the show usually executed, but the intent was right.
K Callan won the part of Martha Kent by wearing a pink track suit. The other actresses auditioning presented themselves as stereotypical farmers. Callan understood the producers wanted a modernized Martha Kent. Eddie Jones played Jonathan Kent. Justin Whalin played Jimmy Olsen.
The Globe That Rewrites His Parents
The show’s mythology gets one clean addition. A hologram-projecting globe later reveals to Clark that he was not abandoned by his biological parents. That is the kind of reveal a series needs if it plans to run for years, and it lands because the show had spent its time on Clark’s interior life rather than on cosmic threats.
The origin itself is set on May 17, 1966. Jonathan and Martha Kent witness a small spaceship crash-land in Shuster’s Field outside Smallville, Kansas. They find the baby Kal-El inside and raise him as their own, naming him Clark Jerome Kent.
Where the Series Slips
Four seasons is a long time to sustain a will-they-won’t-they. The show’s central tension depends on Lois not knowing, and once that knowledge changes, the series has to find new fuel. Lois & Clark does not always find it.
The bigger problem is tonal. The series is listed under Action & Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, and Comedy, and that is not a marketing list so much as a confession. It never picks a lane. The comedy undercuts the drama, and the drama makes the comedy feel weightless.
The Numbers
- Network: ABC
- Run: September 12, 1993 – June 14, 1997
- Seasons: 4
- Episodes: 87
- Created by: Deborah Joy LeVine
- Starring: Dean Cain, Teri Hatcher, Lane Smith, Justin Whalin, K Callan, Eddie Jones
- Score: 6.9/10
Teri Hatcher Is the Reason to Watch
Teri Hatcher is the reason to watch. Lois Lane here is not a prize or a rescue target, she is a working reporter with a beat and a byline, and Hatcher plays her with an edge that keeps the character from becoming a punchline. The show gives her political scandals and criminal operations to chase. That is more professional agency than most superhero love interests got in 1993.
The Daily Planet setting is the other real asset. A newsroom gives the show a reason for its characters to be in the same room, to argue, and to have jobs that matter. It is a cheaper and smarter structure than a fortress or a batcave, and it lets the series borrow from workplace comedy without abandoning its genre.
Cain is better than his harshest reviews suggested. The part requires him to play two people who are the same person, and to make the boring one the real one. He does it. The scene that won him the role, Clark telling Jonathan Kent he does not fit in, is the register the whole series should have stayed in.
6.9 of 10
Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman is a 6.9/10. That number is honest. It is a show with a genuinely good idea, a genuinely good lead pairing, and a supporting cast that occasionally outclasses the material, wrapped around a premise it could not sustain for 87 episodes.
The romance is the point, and the romance is also the ceiling. Once Lois knows, the show has to become something else, and it never becomes something else as confidently as it was the first thing. The Elvis catchphrase is a good example of the show’s instincts: a small, specific, human choice that makes a minor character memorable, in a series that too often reached for the broad joke instead.
Worth watching for Hatcher and for the newsroom. Worth remembering because it proved a superhero series could be a relationship drama and survive four seasons on a major network. Worth criticizing because it had the pieces for something sharper and settled for charming.
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