Humans:
Sunday, Channel 4
Prized
Apart: Saturday, BBC One
Paul
Whitelaw
Set in a parallel present where
lifelike synthetic humans are as commonplace as iPads, sci-fi drama
Humans takes the bold – some might say foolhardy - step of
exploring territory that many great writers have traversed before.
Yet while the questions it poses are
familiar – is artificial intelligence capable of feeling? Do we have the right to create it? Are we in danger of being
usurped by the technology we're increasingly reliant upon? - it
handles them with care and, in terms of world-building, precise
attention to detail.
And while it's too early to say if Humans will add up to much, at least its influences are openly acknowledged in a rather playful way.
It began with a harassed husband and
father purchasing an android servant – known colloquially as synths
– to help around the home. His wife, Laura, is a busy lawyer beset
with mid-life malaise (none of the humans in Humans are
happy). She's grown distant from her family, a problem compounded –
despite her husband's contrary intentions – by the arrival of
Anita, a strikingly beautiful synth whose eerily perfect countenance
sets Laura on edge.
A sly wrinkle on the notion of a
spouse feeling threatened by a partner's interest in a younger model
– a theme echoed by the sub-plot involving a detective and the
hunky synth who cares for his sick wife - this dysfunctional domestic
setting is a master-stroke. It grounds an essentially fantastical
premise in plausible reality. Though we automatically feel sympathy
for Anita – after all, she's only following pre-programmed orders –
we regard her with suspicion when viewed through Laura's eyes.
Sure enough, Laura has reason to be
paranoid. It gradually transpires that Anita belongs to a rogue group
of synths who have somehow developed independent thoughts and
feelings. She's merely pretending to be subservient. But why?
Meanwhile, her fellow sentient synths
are on the run from scientists fearful of their advanced state. This
conspiracy thriller element coexists smoothly with the claustrophobic
unease of the suburbanite scenes and an intriguing strand involving a
widowed scientist (William Hurt) and his malfunctioning
synth/surrogate son.
A droll sense of humour also ensures
that Humans never feels pompous, even when confronting its
hefty moral quandaries head-on. With its chilly aesthetic and dry
spurts of satire, it occasionally resembles one of the better Black
Mirror episodes. I particularly like the way our world, with no
cosmetic alterations at all, is depicted as a bland, cold, chrome and
glass wasteland.
But Humans wouldn't work if it
was wholly cynical. It succeeds in asking us to sympathise with Laura
and invest in Hurt's Geppetto/Pinocchio plight. Plus the horrifying
pathos of robots cursed with living souls haunts the show throughout;
the scenes depicting a sentient synth sold into prostitution make
their point with unsparing yet compassionate intensity.
Regardless of noble intentions, the
whole enterprise would capsize completely were it not for an utterly
convincing performance from Gemma Chan as Anita. Mercifully free of
the body-popping tics which often blight actors playing robots, her
subtly precise, blandly benign demeanour is unsettling and – given
what we know of her true nature – ineffably sad.
By sheer coincidence, Prized Apart
marks the first instance of a quiz show devised and fronted by
robots. A conceptually flawed bore, it sends members of the public on
a Moroccan quest to win £100,000 via harness-enhanced stunts.
Meanwhile, their loved ones back home in the studio provide
half-hearted commentary in a sterile hangar commandeered by chief
Auton Emma Watson.
None of it makes sense. The location
segments don't gel with the stilted studio diversions – they're
clearly not happening simultaneously - and there's never any sense of
genuine peril, triumph or momentum. Imagine I'm A Celebrity...
without the celebrities. Or Bake Off without the baking. Or
life without meaning. That still doesn't come close to the echoing
pointlessness of Prized Apart.
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