Alexander Skarsgård in Murderbot.Steve Wilkie/Apple TV+
There’s a lot of fear out there in the TV world about AI being used to write dramas and comedies in the near future.
But we don’t hear nearly as much about the prospects of AI watching television shows – about bored ChatGPTs taking out Netflix subscriptions to binge series as they await their next prompt from college students writing undergrad English essays about dystopian novels.
Thankfully, Murderbot, the latest thinking-human’s sci-fi series to debut on Apple TV+, has arrived to change the conversation – and ask: Do androids stream episodes of Veep?
The comedy’s protagonist is an Alexander Skarsgard-shaped sec-unit – short for security unit, and a kind of robot rent-a-cop – that has successfully hacked the “governor module” that prevents it from harming clients in a corporation-dominated future.
Secretly able to use the guns in its arms however it wishes, this rogue sec-unit has adopted a dark new semi-ironic name for itself: Murderbot.
(Skarsgard embodies and voices the character, who narrates the series adapted by brothers Chris and Paul Weitz from Martha Wells’s book series The Murderbot Diaries, with the perfect tone of self-amused misanthropy – like an AI trained on the anti-social tech mogul he played on Succession.)
When viewers first meet Murderbot, however, it is definitely not living up to its name. Indeed, it has put aside fantasies of carnage – which it knows will only end with it being deactivated and melted down in a vat – in order to instead binge hours upon hours of what it calls “premium quality entertainment” while half-bottedly doing its job.
This entertainment it can watch without clients noticing doesn’t look far off from the sci-fi shows Apple TV+ has found its niche in and regularly cranks out to please human audiences – from Foundation to For all Mankind, Silo to Succession.
As the series begins, Murderbot has been rented out to a group of scientists from one of the rare communal, not-for-profit planets in its universe called Preservation Alliance.
These researchers make decisions in a non-hierarchical way – often cemented by forming a circle and humming together.
Akshay Khanna, Tattiawna Jones, Sabrina Wu, David Dastmalchian, Noma Dumezweni and Tamara Podemski in Murderbot.Apple TV+
As is often the case in such idealistic communities, however, there is nevertheless a charismatic leader in all but name: Mensah (Noma Dumezweni), presumably in charge because she has a British accent and a sage demeanour.
The other members of the Preservation Alliance team, which seems like a gentle parody of a Star Trek crew, include nervy doctor Bharadwaj (Tamara Podemski) and a depressed augmented human named Gurathin (David Dastmalchian), a kind of Spock-data hybrid.
Rounding out the humans Murderbot is protecting are a married couple, Pin-Lee (Sabrina Wu) and Arada (Tattiawna Jones), who have recently decided to enter into a polyamorous arrangement with colleague Ratthi (Akshay Khanna).
These folx being essentially interplanetary social justice warriors, they, of course, constantly question the ethics of ordering around a cyborg – and debate what pronouns to use to refer to their sec-unit. (For those preoccupied with genitals, Murderbot has none – it’s smooth like a Ken doll in that area.)
Eventually, a plot breaks out as the mission and its researchers are imperilled – and Murderbot, annoyed, pauses episodes of his fave show The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon to deal with the situation even though he doesn’t, strictly speaking, have to do so.
The premium quality of this show-within-a-show – populated by better known actors like John Cho, playing a ship captain who falls in love with a semi-sentient navigation unit – is debated within the show.
But the premium quality of Murderbot is debatable too in its first episodes – it’s not uncommon of late for Apple TV+ series to get off to underwhelming starts (see: Government Cheese, Your Friends and Neighbors).
The main issue here is an ensemble that, initially, evinces no comic chemistry.
Another is a perspective problem – the human characters around Murderbot not only seem silly and uninteresting to him, but to the viewers.
If it weren’t my job to watch television, I would have stopped after a few episodes – human life is short and the streaming universe seemingly infinite – and missed out on the discovery that the series finds actual laughs and rewards emotional investment in all its characters later on, fully finding a groove five episodes into its first ten-episode season.
I’d advise all AIs and humans seeking a new show to hold off until the full show is available July 11 – and then binge the short series (some episodes are less than 20 minutes when you skip the opening and credits) so you don’t get frustrated and kill the humans around you.
Though, please, don’t kill all the humans around you under any circumstances.
