(courtesy IMP Awards)
SNAPSHOT
Based on Martha Wells’ Hugo & Nebula Award-winning book series, Murderbot is a sci-fi thriller/comedy about a self-hacking security construct who is horrified by human emotion yet drawn to its vulnerable clients. Murderbot must hide its free will and complete a dangerous assignment when all it really wants is to be left alone to watch futuristic soap operas and figure out its place in the universe. Murderbot is a series created by filmmakers / writers / producers brothers Chris Weitz (Down to Earth, About a Boy, The Golden Compass, The Twilight Saga: New Moon, A Better Life, Operation Finale, Afraid) & Paul Weitz (American Pie, Down to Earth, About a Boy, In Good Company, American Dreamz, Cirque du Freak, Little Fockers, Being Flynn, Admission, Grandma, Bel Canto, Fatherhood). Adapted from the book of the same name written by Martha Wells. With episodes directed by Toa Fraser, Paul Weitz & Chris Weitz. Made by Depth of Field Productions, Phantom Four Films, CBS Studios. Executive produced by Alexander Skarsgård, Andrew Miano, David S. Goyer, Keith Levine, Chris Weitz & Paul Weitz. (courtesy First Showing)
The Murderbot Dairies books of Martha Wells – see reviews of #1 All Systems Red and #2 Artificial Condition – and are brilliantly readable.
Not simply because they tell richly expansive stories in the all-too-brief lengths of their constituent novellas but because in each book, you are taught deep and abiding lessons about what it means to be truly human by a being that is technically not supposed to ever know what that is.
But the titular protagonist has hacked himself and now has disguised freewill – disguised because to openly display his agency is to invite panic and retributive harm by the people he serves; many people, it turns out, don’t like a robot with a mind of its own – and it is her, not so much the people around him, who offer up sage lessons about what humanity is and can be.
The books are masterfully done on all counts and if this trailer is any indication, the upcoming series could well be one of those rare adaptations that captures just-so its literary source material.
Murderbot premieres on AppleTV+ on 16 may with its first two episodes with the remaining eight episodes released weekly intil 11 July.