Robert Sheehan’s Nervy Charm Shines in the Wildly Enjoyable Final Series**Remember when Robert Sheehan was expected to be the next big Irish actor in Hollywood? The Portlaoise native never quite reached that A-list status, but he has found the perfect role for his unique energy in the esoteric comic-book drama, **The Umbrella Academy** (season four on Netflix from Thursday).

Sheehan plays Klaus, one of a family of superheroes brought together by the eccentric and manipulative Sir Reginald Hargreeves.

While his adopted siblings have more traditional powers – super-strength, the ability to jump between timescapes, etc.

– Klaus can communicate with the dead, which is more awkward than it sounds, especially when facing a territorial ghost dog (as happens in this final season).

**The Umbrella Academy** is adapted from a comic book written by Gerard Way, better known as the frontman of the “emo” band My Chemical Romance.

Anyone who ever hung out at the Central Bank in Dublin with their fringe covering their eyes will know that emo was a genre that turned suburban melancholy into performance art – and it’s tempting to conclude that Klaus is the character into whom Way has poured much of his “emo-ness”.

Sheehan’s nervy charm is one of the driving qualities in a wildly enjoyable, if tangled, six-part farewell from a show that became a surprise hit for Netflix in February 2019 when it shot straight to the streamer’s most-watched list.

As the action resumes, Klaus and the rest of the Academy are in a parallel timeline where they have lost their powers but are cheerfully getting on with life as civilians.

For Klaus, no longer talking to the dead is a blessing.

Living with his actor sister Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) and Allison’s daughter Claire, he’s sober for the first time in his life and, he suspects, happy too (he’s never been happy before, so he can’t be sure).

Sheehan shares a fizzing chemistry with the rest of the cast.

They include a brooding Viktor, Aidan Gallagher as time-hopping “Number Five”, Tom Hopper as clumsy but well-intentioned Luther, David Castañeda as knife-wielding Diego, and Ritu Arya as Diego’s wife Lila (formerly a time-traveling assassin).

All the actors do well with their characters, but Sheehan is especially good at projecting Klaus’s brittle, hippy-dippy qualities (his American accent is flawless, too).

Alas, just when Klaus has found peace, fate has other plans for him and the rest of the Academy, and, not for the first time, it involves a terrible event with potentially world-changing consequences.

That event is “The Cleanse”, an imminent rupture in the space-time fabric predicted by a cult called The Keepers, led by suburban oddballs Jean (Megan Mullally) and Gene (Nick Offerman).

**The Umbrella Academy** is great fun, but you need to be up to speed with its dense and convoluted storyline, and season four is not the place to start.

Instead, rewind back to year one, where lots of charming weirdness awaits.

However, for those already fully versed in the Umbrella Universe, the concluding season has lots of action, plenty of twists, and a moving final episode.

Even in these days of peak universal superhero fatigue, it’s worth your time.