HEROES aims to conquer the world in series three, about to start filming in Hollywood.
That was the message from series creator Tim Kring in the press room at last night’s Bafta TV Awards.
He also made some interesting comments about both series two – which starts in the UK this week – and the long-term future of Heroes.
Having collected the Bafta mask for International programme, Tim came in to talk to us, along with Adrian Pasdar and Milo Ventimiglia, who play screen brothers Nathan and Peter Petrelli.
Producer and screenwriter Tim said the Heroes’ team really appreciated the British Academy TV honour.
“It’s pretty amazing. We make this show in such a little bubble.
“We work in these dingy sound stages in the middle of Hollywood and to be able to come out of our collective cave every once in a while to see how people are responding to it, is really, truly amazing.

“It’s a kind of odd, surreal disconnect.
“We really felt very strongly about the UK. The BBC was a huge feather in our cap and we allowed the film crew to stay with us for a fair part of the season and we all got to know them – the Heroes Unmasked documentary.

“And so there was a real strong connection with us and this market. We didn’t take it for granted at all.”
Adrian added: “It’s great to be a part of something…there’s so much talent on the BBC, the television programming is so great, to be a part of that is a real honour. I’ve always enjoyed watching BBC.”
Questioned about criticism of series two after the success of the first season, Tim replied: “I think there is a natural tendency when you raise that high to see whether you can sustain it.
“It’s an imperfect science making a show like this and you hope you learn along the way and that you do more right than wrong.
“I’m just thrilled that we are now making series three and just going to conquer the world with it.”
With series two screening on BBC2 from this Thursday, Tim said he had been misunderstood about early episodes not being as good as he had hoped.
“I was asked – what lessons we learned along the way, what would we do differently?
“And when you ask somebody like me – who is basically a perfectionist – if I had a chance to do something again, I will always say yes. I think any one of us would do that.
“So I was sort of quick to pick apart what I had done.
“But the truth is, the season stands up in a really beautiful way and seen as a whole, I just think it’s really terrific.

“We went from season one to season two without a break and so we were all staggering by the end of it.
“So we were really able to take advantage of a nice break because of the writers’ strike.”
Adrian said: “To Tim’s credit, though, he’s never sacrificed the good for the perfect.
“He is a perfectionist but they’ve always managed to connect all the dots very succinctly.
“When it’s all looked and viewed in its entirety, it makes a lot of sense.
“I think when it’s looked back on, it’s going to be remembered a little bit more fondly.”
Tim explained that he didn’t know how many series of Heroes would eventually be made.
“In the competitive market that we live in, you exist on whether you are delivering the goods.
“We’re prepared on this show,” he added, pointing out that Heroes was not locked into a specific ending.
“We didn’t say we have to get off an island, we didn’t say that it was ended after the end of a mystery.
“So we are set to go as long as the audience is with us.”
Tim said it was crucial that Heroes was character-driven.
“We were going after a mass audience and usually the more genre shows end up finding just a cult audience that can exist on smaller cable channels.
“But on a big network like NBC in the States, we wouldn’t have survived with that kind of audience. So we had to reach a large audience.
“There’s also a practical reason for that – because of the budgets that we work with, we have to be a little bit more character-driven because we can’t afford to just have all special effects from wall to wall.”
Milo spoke about his sex-symbol status among some fans.

“My friends make fun of me a lot more now, because of it.
“I’m just a normal guy with a day job like anybody else, to them.
“So I think when you get magazines saying, ‘Hey, that guy’s sexy,’ or people are screaming from the cars as they’re driving by, my friends and I find a lot of humour in it.”
Adrian joked: “I think he’s really sexy.”
He described his own sex symbol status as “silly”.
But Milo interrupted: “It’s not so silly.
“I actually get to stand about ‘this close’ away from him in every scene that we do – and, yeah, he is a sexy man.”
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