Humans: Pilot

June 16, 2015 10:54 AM - Season 1, Episode 1

The Hawkins family acquire Anita, a Synth. But instead of making life easier for Laura it creates new tensions. Leo is on the run with his Synth, Max. Pete feels pushed aside by his wife's Synth and George won't part with his.

A new sci-fi show screening on UK's E4. Stars William Hurt and The IT Crowd's Jen.

Clips available here.
Related Persona Synthetics "company" website.

posted by tracicle (12 comments total)

This feels like an extended Black Mirror episode and I think has a lot of potential. A few synths have somehow developed human emotions and wants, and are striving for freedom from slavery, but there are the added complications of the needs of the actual humans. William Hurt's George relies on his synth to keep the memories of his dead wife alive, for example, while others perform more menial tasks like street cleaning and ticket collection -- which makes you wonder what employment rates are like. There's also the creepy behaviour -- Anita in particular lurks very well, and spends a lot of time looking at things.

I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes. They didn't waste any time in setting up a potential crisis in the very first episode, so I'm hoping for plenty of creepy android action.
posted by tracicle at 10:59 AM on June 16, 2015

Should be interesting.

I'm not sure I'll be able to shake off "Jen marries Mr. Grove" before this ends.
posted by lmfsilva at 12:08 PM on June 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

I feel like without exception every American remake of a foreign TV series I've watched has been a huge disappointment (I can't honestly include House of Cards because I've not seen it -- I loved the original so much I just haven't been interested), but this being an eight-episode AMC and Channel Four series leads me to believe that I ought to give this a try. BTW, the original, Real Humans, has been posted here, too.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:29 PM on June 16, 2015

Real Humans on FanFare (it was Swedish, and I'm not sure how widely available it is/was).
posted by filthy light thief at 9:54 AM on June 17, 2015

Home Counties Bladerunner (and not in a bad way)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:58 AM on June 17, 2015

Interesting. I hadn't seen Real Humans and it looks like it's a very close copy down to some of the names. I don't think I have the patience or time to watch them in parallel.
posted by tracicle at 10:19 AM on June 17, 2015

Seconding the "feels like Black Mirror" sentiment (although it's a bit less relentlessly on the nose than BM, in my opinion.)
posted by tautological at 11:52 PM on June 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Humans finally premiered last night here in the US. I liked what I saw. Lots of set-up for the various intertwined arcs. Good start. I'd be interested to know what, if anything, is being cut/re-edited from the UK broadcast in order to accommodate the US time/advertising constraints.

.............
~I feel like without exception every American remake of a foreign TV series I've watched has been a huge disappointment

I've seen them both, and I very much preferred the US remake of Being Human to the UK version. But, generally, yeah, I would agree with your assessment.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:08 AM on June 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's interesting to find out this is a remake of a Swedish show. Never a good sign. (For instance, the american remake of Les Revnants "The Returned" is just dreadful.)

The thing I don't like is just how the same old tropes are trotted out. I understand the economy for the production to use human looking robots, but for the renegades to have (presumably) human emotions feels tired to me. I think I'd have preferred a little more exploration as to how their sentience works and what differentiates it from actual humans.

But it is a nice production, lots of familiar faces.
posted by Catblack at 3:49 AM on July 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

I just watched this first episode and was pretty meh. So much clumsy writing and acting. In the hopes anyone is still here and sees this, does the show get better? Later episodes get little enthusiasm, so I'm guessing not.

(I really miss Almost Human. That show had a lot of potential.)
posted by Nelson at 8:27 AM on August 10, 2015

I watched to the end... and yeah it's very variable, there's some peaks and troughs and overall it was okay but it got a bit scrappy in it's last episode and didn't really wrap things up as well as it could have done - I don't mind 'Oh what's going to happen now?' sequel hanging but you need some sort of conclusion. So if you didn't really get into it a first then I don't think it's gonna be for you.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 11:09 AM on August 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

like many adaptations, I think the ending may have suffered because they had to leave some room for a possible (now confirmed) season 2.
posted by lmfsilva at 6:41 AM on August 11, 2015