Humans ep 1
Near-future setting, but then, the clever ads for this show, purporting to be ads for synths, jostled with that annoying Cortana ad (your mobile phone as PA!) which also popped up on my laptop last night.It looks like show’s thought-through the implications of artificially intelligent androids carrying out ‘menial’ jobs for humans for several parts of society and several age groups. Good world building, or building on previous world building.
Things got very intriguing and mysterious with the ‘five weeks earlier’ flashback, and we got to see more characters and more relationships/set-ups between humans and synths and learned there are definitely synths and synths - upgrades and obseletes and the freaks and the ones that do what they were meant to.
I thought the watery flashbacks Anita/Mia had were a little too obvious, and would have just been happy with the ambiguity of observing her and knowing she hadn’t been in contact with the others. Anyway, the first one led to a Never Let Me Go reference, so I’m going to take the casting of Sherlock’s Anderson and the use of ‘freaks’ to describe the conscious synths as deliberate. We had Asimov locks and the question of whether androids dream and other references I probably missed, aplenty, although it felt like all the characters were genre blind. It’s not a bundle of laughs, but calling a synth played by Rebecca Front a ‘bad boy’ raised a few eyebrows, even if it was done by Thingy from Teachers, whom I always loved as Thingy from Teachers.
William Hurt is rather touchingly playing Gepetto to a Pinnochio who is facing android old age, while there’s more to Matilda than Moody Teen, there’s someone who fears their future is compromised. I really liked Niska and felt all kinds of empathy for her situation that Leo didn’t - totally understandable that she’d rather choose freedom and potential danger than the ‘safety’ of being a prostitute.
I’m confused as to how Mr Singularity knew or theorised about these synths and whether they were deliberately programmed to be self-aware or if they developed it. How did they find each other and Leo?
It’s Channel 4, so the synths were racially diverse (and with Anita/Mia being of Chinese extraction, not black, and the only other domestic synths being white, while Fred was black, whereas someone who looked more eastern European might be more pointed, they avoided the obvious parallels). I think you could delve into the gendered aspects of the main synth being female, bought by a man, the object of a human man’s love (and though it seemed returned before she was taken, his love seems to be driving Leo in a motivation Anita/Mia doesn’t seem to share), the fact that a female-identified synth is a prostitute is a cliché in SF because of men setting the terms - and it does the modern thing of acknowledging Niska’s self-determination and desire to escape her situation, but we still had Leo go to a sex club and watch it, which is problematic (and compare how the detective sergeant’s wife’s dynamic with her synth carer played out - from the DS’s POV). And Laura was definitely feeling threatened as a mother by a younger-looking, more beautiful and artificial model, while Anita/Mia was showing maternal behaviour...
Overall, it’s quite good. Not flawless, I don’t think all of the answers to the mysteries it poses were or are ever going to hold up to the intrigue, but it feels very pertinent and ambitious enough - that is, I feel the scope is well-judged so far. I think it did a good job of making us sympathetic to various characters, the acting is good - the synths are unnervingly convincing. And yay to British sci-fi on the telly.
This entry was originally posted at http://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/184972.html.
Things got very intriguing and mysterious with the ‘five weeks earlier’ flashback, and we got to see more characters and more relationships/set-ups between humans and synths and learned there are definitely synths and synths - upgrades and obseletes and the freaks and the ones that do what they were meant to.
I thought the watery flashbacks Anita/Mia had were a little too obvious, and would have just been happy with the ambiguity of observing her and knowing she hadn’t been in contact with the others. Anyway, the first one led to a Never Let Me Go reference, so I’m going to take the casting of Sherlock’s Anderson and the use of ‘freaks’ to describe the conscious synths as deliberate. We had Asimov locks and the question of whether androids dream and other references I probably missed, aplenty, although it felt like all the characters were genre blind. It’s not a bundle of laughs, but calling a synth played by Rebecca Front a ‘bad boy’ raised a few eyebrows, even if it was done by Thingy from Teachers, whom I always loved as Thingy from Teachers.
William Hurt is rather touchingly playing Gepetto to a Pinnochio who is facing android old age, while there’s more to Matilda than Moody Teen, there’s someone who fears their future is compromised. I really liked Niska and felt all kinds of empathy for her situation that Leo didn’t - totally understandable that she’d rather choose freedom and potential danger than the ‘safety’ of being a prostitute.
I’m confused as to how Mr Singularity knew or theorised about these synths and whether they were deliberately programmed to be self-aware or if they developed it. How did they find each other and Leo?
It’s Channel 4, so the synths were racially diverse (and with Anita/Mia being of Chinese extraction, not black, and the only other domestic synths being white, while Fred was black, whereas someone who looked more eastern European might be more pointed, they avoided the obvious parallels). I think you could delve into the gendered aspects of the main synth being female, bought by a man, the object of a human man’s love (and though it seemed returned before she was taken, his love seems to be driving Leo in a motivation Anita/Mia doesn’t seem to share), the fact that a female-identified synth is a prostitute is a cliché in SF because of men setting the terms - and it does the modern thing of acknowledging Niska’s self-determination and desire to escape her situation, but we still had Leo go to a sex club and watch it, which is problematic (and compare how the detective sergeant’s wife’s dynamic with her synth carer played out - from the DS’s POV). And Laura was definitely feeling threatened as a mother by a younger-looking, more beautiful and artificial model, while Anita/Mia was showing maternal behaviour...
Overall, it’s quite good. Not flawless, I don’t think all of the answers to the mysteries it poses were or are ever going to hold up to the intrigue, but it feels very pertinent and ambitious enough - that is, I feel the scope is well-judged so far. I think it did a good job of making us sympathetic to various characters, the acting is good - the synths are unnervingly convincing. And yay to British sci-fi on the telly.
This entry was originally posted at http://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/184972.html.