You and me are Saps. But don’t feel bad about it, it’s only a handy abbreviation they use for Homo Sapiens. They? Why, The Tomorrow People – those characters with the incredible powers that set them just that bit ahead of us run-of-the-mill members of the Human Race. The Tomorrow People - Homo Superior. Back on screen again next Monday (the 28th) in a brand new series from Thames Television.

We’ve lost a couple from the previous series. Stephen and Tyso. But as creator/director Roger Price says, “Tomorrow People are always having to go and spend terms of duty on the Galactic Trig. That’s a huge complex in space staffed by super-intelligent beings from all over the universe. A sort of futuristic United Nations that keeps an eye on interplanetary peace.”

Not that the new series is particularly space orientated. Far from it. Our para-normal friends are just as bothered with Earthbound conflicts against the CIA, against the Russian and British secret service agencies as with problems created by alien influence. “These latest stories,” says Roger Price, “are much stronger meat than the last ones. They’re tighter, more in keeping with today’s trends in television.”

The set up remains the same. The Tomorrow People have their lab – their headquarters – in a disused Underground station in London. There they keep Tim - the incredible thinking, talking biotronic computer they built to keep them informed of trouble and danger. They also maintain their secondary HQ in a piece of space-junk – an eternally orbiting satellite that has outgrown its original purpose.

The main characteristics of the Tomorrow People are their ability to communicate telepathically, over any distance, and even with their computer, their powers of telekinesis (Mike for example can open locks just by thinking about it) and of course teleportation. Jaunting as they call it. It enables them to travel tens, thousands, millions of miles in the blink of an eye.

Mike, John and Elizabeth are the stars of the show. Mike – rescued from the probable life of crime as a safe-buster, John – son of a police sergeant, and Elizabeth – a teacher.

In real life they’re respectively Mike Holoway, Nicholas Young and Elizabeth Adare. Mike’s familiar as the sensational young drummer with Flintlock, of course. He’s from Dagenham, Essex, and lives in a house that his father – who’s also his manager – has practically doubled in size with various extensions. That’s because Holoway senior is an architect and builder. Mike’s greatest love is the super-equipped recording studio that’s part of it. “Complex like Tim,” he says.

Mike Holoway’s a busy guy. He alternates between acting, playing drums, school and the lessons of a private tutor with energy that’s worthy of any Tomorrow Person. He’s big on technical drawing and woodwork, but admits that his main love is music. Taught by his grandfather – a professional drummer – Mike remembers being a rhythm addict at the tender age of two. “When granddad was practising, I used to sit there and thump the table in time.” He’d like one day to be known as a top skins man. His own particular idol in that field is the legendary drummer Buddy Rich.

Nicholas Young’s also into music. He plays the electric guitar. But with him acting’s the thing. He played his first part in a film called Eagle Rock when he was thirteen, and still studying at drama school. Since then he’s been a television regular “usually playing rather snooty school-boys”. It was the Tomorrow People – he’s the last remaining original – that gave him his first chance to break away from that image. As John he’s the leader of the group. The serious scientific one. But Nicholas himself has a good eye for humour. He recalls the time he was a stand in for a part in a children’s television show. “I was paid ten pence for it. And out of that, I had to forfeit twenty-five percent as a fee for my agent! But I didn’t let success go to my head…” Nick’s studies to be an actor were helped by an extraordinary stroke of good fortune. A keen medal collector, he was nosing around a junk shop one day when he came across a Napoleonic item that he bought for a pound. Later he discovered it was worth three hundred and fifty! He’s a photography buff as well, and gets a big kick out of studying the special effects techniques used in The Tomorrow People.

Newcastle-born Elizabeth Adare lived in Sierra Leone until she was eight. Her mother is half Sierra Leonian, half Gambian, and her father is from Ghana. Although her parents wanted her to study law, Elizabeth had other ideas. She joined a drama group in the North London school she attended, and she eventually went to the Mount View stage school. It wasn’t long before she was working hard in the theatre, mainly in African and West Indian plays. But she also had parts in ‘The National Health’ with Jim Dale, ‘Banana Box’ with Leonard Rossitor and the film version of ‘Father Dear Father’.

“Being black can make getting work quite difficult.” She says. “The trouble is that casting directors will turn you down for a part because putting a black person in a certain role automatically makes the viewer look for special meanings that possibly detract from the plot.” In the Tomorrow People, thankfully, there is no underlying message at all. Elizabeth is Elizabeth and that’s that.

Coming back to the series itself what is it’s special magic? Perhaps that every young viewer is himself or herself a potential Tomorrow person. As those Homo Superiors state, there must be hundreds, thousands of others like themselves scattered throughout the world.