Imagine being able to make people orgasm with a single touch. In Extraordinary, a new comedy in which everybody over 18 has a superpower, Gordon has this special gift. Except, he sees it more as a disadvantage. “It’s not cool,” he says on a date. He puts on rubber gloves to prove to his date that he can make her climax without the superpower. Alas he can’t – but because his date fakes it, he’s chuffed with himself. This is just one way in which debut screenwriter Emma Moran, 28, uses her surreal world to take a sideways glance at the real one. There’s also an emotionally detached guy who can fly, and does so out of the window after casual sex. And there’s the woman doing job interviews who compels candidates to spill the truth. “I am worried that I’m a little bit racist,” comes one admission. Only one person hasn’t developed a superpower: Jen (Máiréad Tyers), who is in her 20s, works in a fancy-dress shop, puts up with awful men and feels like an ordinary loser. The series finds her on a mission to finally claim her “thing” in life. “That comes from my own experience of being a bit directionless,” says Moran. “Everybody else’s jobs are taking off, and they’re getting engaged and I’m … doing nothing.” While the emotional base in the show is, in her words, “that everybody has their shit together apart from me”, she wanted to give her story a trippy twist, like two of her favourite sitcoms, Spaced and The Mighty Boosh. “The superpowers thing came in later; I’d just been watching loads of superhero shows,” she adds. “Some are just wacky, but we’ve also done a good job of tying them to character observations.” She doesn’t seem to realise it yet, but Moran’s career is clearly on the up. After she cut her teeth as a standup comic and writer for panel shows, Extraordinary, her first screenplay, was greenlit in the depths of lockdown. “I was living with my parents in Northern Ireland,” she says. “I got the Zoom call and was like, ‘OK cool, sure.’ Then I went into the kitchen to tell my family and watched Nadiya Bakes with them. It took a few days for me to ring back and be like, ‘Oh my God, what?’” Moran had every reason to be shocked: the production company she has been working with also produced Killing Eve. No pressure, then. There’s also the fact that Extraordinary is going straight to Disney+, pretty impressive for someone who describes her decision to do a screenwriting MA as a “quarter-life crisis”. Jokes aside, she is sincere when she calls the whole experience a “bit of a fairytale”. Her fresh perspective and unswerving energy are matched by emerging star Tyers. “I thought the script was hilarious,” she says. “I felt an affinity with it, I could hear the humour.” After a small part opposite Jamie Dornan earlier this year in Oscar-winning film Belfast, Jen is the Cork-born actor’s first leading roleon screen. “I loved the aspect of it being quite green and us all coming to it with such pure excitement – just looking around and going, ‘This is mad, isn’t it?’” It sounds like production was a lovely whirlwind for the young cast and new writer; Tyers calls it a “bonanza” in which they all held each other’s hands. There was, however, one well-weathered star on set to show them how it’s done. Siobhán McSweeney, who played sister Michael in Derry Girls – plays Jen’s hard-to-impress mum. “I had to have a serious word with myself on the first day I knew she was going to be in,” laughs Tyers. “I told myself, ‘Just don’t shout at her face with excitement.’ But she’s become a really good friend now. If you’d have told me that a year ago … ” With the show being released in dreary January, Tyers promises that it’s the perfect pick-me-up, but says it also has a more vulnerable side. “There’s so much heart to it,” she says. “There’s a storyline about grief; not being able to face it head on.” It tackles the friendships we make in our 20s, too: “They are like family but they come with drama – I love how that’s explored with nuance in Emma’s writing; friendships are so complicated.” One thing writer and lead actor will need to get used to with their newfound success is answering the question: “So, what superpower would you have?” Luckily, they’re already well prepared. For Moran, it depends how insecure she’s feeling on the day she’s asked: “I might do something vain like shapeshifting into another body … I sometimes say invisibility but I always come across as pervy.” Tyer is more decisive: “I’d always have better internet connection!”