True, true, great acting, writing and directing can outshine any production shortcomings. For instance, I still love the Troughton, Pertwee, and Tom Baker Doctors Who, because the writing, acting and directing usually more than compensate for the lack of effects. But I do not see the writing and directing in Powers as being up to that level (they do not have the equivalent of a Douglas Adams or Terry Nation writing for them). The acting, most definitely, is as good as you could want, but not the other parts. I don't blame any one person for the problems, but it is kind of obvious that it is the 1st live action television production PlayStation Network has done. It does seem odd to me though, as Sony has made tons of stuff with excellent effects before, and Sony has CGI programmers up the yin-yang from game development. So it isn't like they couldn't access people who know what they're doing. And those damn purple lights whatshername shoots are distractingly crappy, like something from an 8 bit video game. And if you pay close attention, some of the sets wobble.
You are right, it is a great cast, and it has halfway decent writing, and by the standard of any show except Daredevil it's pretty true to the comic. But IMHO, the effects, and the lack of any snappy Bendis dialog (kinda his signature in comics) has made it disappointing. I will still eventually watch it all- already paid for all of season 1- but I'm not rushing to see new episodes at this point. I think I'm two behind now. On the other hand, I have been enjoying Bendis and Oehming's new comic, the United States of Murder Inc.
Maybe, if they get a 2nd season, Bendis will actually write more than one episode (so far he only wrote one, "Level 13").
Another part of my disappointment with it is that I was hoping the first non-zombie, creator-owned comic book tv adaptation would be as good as any of the DC or Marvel ones. Creator-owned is the smallest sector of comics TV and movies, and are the hardest to get made, since they don't normally have Marvel or DC behind them. There is at least one more coming- Jim Starlin's Dreadstar is in development. But that one needs good effects even more than Powers does, since Dreadstar is full-on space opera- space ships, multiple alien species, exploding planets, etc.
I'm frankly more interested in AKA Jessica Jones at this point, which is another Bendis creation, but is being done by Netflix, ABC, Disney, and some of the people involved with Daredevil. Plus that one has David Tennant, one hopes in purple make up (he's playing Purple Man). And Luke Cage is likely going to be heavily Bendis as well. And of course he wrote the New Avengers and Avengers Civil War titles (though not the main sequence, which was Millar3).