Smallville back for round ten

Thanks to stable Friday night ratings, Clark Kent is back to fight another day. Yesterday, The CW ordered a tenth season of Smallville. Speculation mounted that The CW wouldn’t renew the superhero series, given its long run on the air and late-in-the-day renewal, but it’s expected to return this autumn.

During the past two seasons, the drama has moved closer than ever before to establishing links with the Superman mythos: Clark working at the Daily Planet, a more thorough exploration of his relationship with Lois and introducing even more villains from the DC lore.

Certainly, you’d expect a show to start showing signs of age at around the fifth season – certainly, that’s something that happened to Smallville, but it has experienced something of a creative reprieve over the past couple of seasons, what with the Absolute Justice TV movie and Brian Austin Green pitching in as Metallo.

It’s now rivaling Stargate as the longest-running hour-long sci-fi drama ever. I wouldn’t even bet that this is the final season, either – The CW hasn’t indicated that tenth necessarily means last, and, with the show still bringing in a healthy 2.5 million viewers a week, the fan base is clearly still active.