TV Review: "Murderbot: Episodes 1-3"
The newest sci-fi offering from Apple is thought-provoking and funny and features a number of great performances, including from Alexander Skarsgård.
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Warning: Spoilers for the series follow.
I want to start this review by saying that I give Apple TV a lot of credit for continuing to pour money and resources into solid sci-fi storytelling, particularly given the extent to which streaming as a whole seems to be pulling back from big-budget spectacle (see also: the cancellation of The Wheel of Time). I’ve become quite a fan of a number of its science fiction series, including Silo and Foundation, though it’s taking me a while to get fully caught up with the latter. There’s just something refreshing about a streaming giant that’s willing to take big risks and to invest a lot of money into making science fiction storytelling look and feel epic and cool and thought-provoking. After all, sci-fi is just so well-suited to longform televised storytelling, so thank goodness at least one streaming giant has realized this and kept at it.
The newest series to join the Apple stable is Murderbot, based on The Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells, particularly the first book, All Systems Red. The titular robot is played by none other than Alexander Skarsgård and, as the first episode establishes, this particular security unit has managed to hack its own controls and thus gained free will and autonomy, though it must hide the truth about this from its human owners and employers, since any sign that it has done so will inevitably lead to its decommission. Things get more complicated, however, when the murderbot is hired by a group of researchers to guard them while they explore a planet, and the first three episodes primarily focus on Murderbot’s efforts to keep them safe and keep its newfound free will secret.
I can think of few people better equipped to play a sardonic security robot than Alexander Skasrgård. He has the right mixture of icy Nordic beauty and sardonic delivery to really make this character land and, because so much of the series is mediated through his point of view (thanks in no small part to his voiceover), we learn a great deal about what and how he thinks. The brilliance of the show’s writing, and of Skarsgård’s performance, is that you actually start seeing all of humanity, and not just the ones he happens to be with at the time, as more than a little ridiculous.
The thing that really amazed me about these episodes was how narratively stream-lined they were. There’s no fat on these story bones, and with each episode clocking in at just under half an hour, it’s a series that will certainly be easy to binge once the entire thing has aired. The first three episodes set up a rhythm that, judging from the other reviews I’ve read, will stay the same throughout the rest of the season, wherein Murderbot observes some strange things about humans, diffuses or neutralizes some threat, and then the episode ends on a cliffhanger as some other, deeper threat emerges. These aren’t complaints, mind you, but I do find it intriguing that the series has opted for a more sitcommy structure and tone than one usually sees in science fiction. It’s refreshing, honestly, and I’m glad that the series wears its humor on its sleeve.
This isn’t to say that there isn’t some excellent character development, because there is. In addition to the title character, there are the gaggle of humans who are simultaneously his masters and his charges, each of whom has their own struggles and foibles. Noma Dumezweni brings a soft, gentle nobility to her character of Mensah, who is the leader of the team. I always relish the chance to see Dumezweni on the screen, and there is so much depth to the character in just the first three episodes. I certainly can’t wait to see what more hidden depths she reveals in the episodes ahead.
Just as fascinating are the messy throuple comprised of Pin-Lee (an always-great Sabrina Wu), Ratthi (an extremely handsome Akshay Khanna), and Arada (Tattiawna Jones). These three are just three bundles of chaos waiting to happen, particularly since it seems that Pin-Lee is far less enthused about the new throuple than Arada. It’s still early days, but I’m looking forward to seeing how the show navigates this fraught emotional territory for these deliciously chaotic characters.
The real standout among the humans has to be David Dastmalchian’s Gurathin, who harbors deep suspicions of Murderbot from the moment he enters their employ. He makes no secret of the fact that he doesn’t trust this robot, and in one notable scene he even tries to fool Murderbot into revealing the extent of his new autonomy. Dastmalchian always brings an unsettling intensity to his roles–I was disappointed not to see more of him in Dune–and that is certainly the case here. There’s far more to him than meets the eye, and it’s precisely his strangeness that makes him so compelling and such a figure of bewildered and nervous fascination for Murderbot.
Indeed, one of the best things about Murderbot, and the source of a great deal of the humor, is just how flummoxed Murderbot is by the antics of the humans around him. To be sure, these space hippies are a strange bunch, representing the many different mores and social formations that humanity has taken in this far-flung galaxy. Others have noted that Murderbot is neurodivergent-coded and it’s precisely this aspect of his personality that makes him such a fascinating observer of human nature and all of its dizzyingly fascinating and frustrating permutations.
There’s also a biting bit of social commentary layered into the fact that Murderbot would much rather spend time watching this universe’s equivalent of soap operas rather than taking care of his charges. The brief glimpses we get of these dramas shows that they are truly delightful and ridiculous, full of the sort of overwrought dialogue and unlikely plot twists that not even our tawdriest and most thinly-sketched soap opera could hope to best. Given that Murderbot learns most of what he knows about human behavior from these dramas, it’s hardly surprising that he sometimes stymies his human companions with his manner of speech. His obsession with this mediated form of reality is a timely warning to all of us to be a tad more mindful in how we also engage with the screens that are always calling for our attention (even if we don’t necessarily have to worry about two-headed worms eating our companions).
I honestly didn’t know what to expect going in to Murderbot. Though I’ve read some of Wells’ other work, I’ve yet to read the various books in the series. However, I must admit that this show has already got me hooked. It’s one of those series that makes for a quick binge, but it also rewards more careful and sustained viewing. I’m already eagerly awaiting this week’s episode!
Like any good science fiction, Murderbot holds up a mirror to us as humans, forcing us to think about how we conceive of ourselves and, indeed, what makes for personhood itself. Even the question of what constitutes the term “human” itself is brought under scrutiny when it’s revealed, or at the very least suggested, that Murderbot might have been partially built using discarded human tissue. Of course, such questions are never easily answered, and the brilliance of a show like this one is that it forces us to really sit with those thorny conundrums. The fact that it is able to do so while also being compulsively watchable is a true testament to its quality.
I’ll be eagerly watching what happens next!