SNAPSHOT
USA Network presents MR. ROBOT, a psychological thriller that follows Elliot (Rami Malek, The Pacific), a young programmer, who works as a cyber-security engineer by day and a vigilante hacker by night. Elliot finds himself at a crossroads when the mysterious leader (Christian Slater, The Adderall Diaries) of an underground hacker group recruits him to destroy the firm he is paid to protect. Compelled by his personal beliefs, Elliot struggles to resist the chance to take down the multinational CEOs he believes are running (and ruining) the world. This contemporary and culturally resonant drama also stars Portia Doubleday (Her), Carly Chaikin (Suburgatory) and Martin Wallström (Easy Money III).From Universal Cable Productions, MR. ROBOT is executive produced by Sam Esmail (Comet) and Anonymous Content’s Steve Golin (True Detective) and Chad Hamilton (Breakup at a Wedding). (Official synopsis via USA Networks)
You only have to take a look at a single edition of the nightly news to realise that there is a lot, and I mean, A LOT, about the world that needs saving.
ISIS storming across the Middle East, climate change, growing income inequality, secret trade deals, cutting down of the rainforests, huge and growing numbers of refugees displaced from their homes … the list goes on and on and you have to wonder, in your glass half-empty moments if it’s even possible to save it.
Social hacktivist Elliott goes one step further in the trailer for USA Network’s intriguing new show Mr. Robot, wondering if the world is even worth saving.
Now that’s so much not glass half empty as glass drunk all the way down, smashed on the floor and swept up into the trash.
So gloomy is his assessment of the way humanity and the world at large is being treated by the mysterious Powers That Be that he resists the chance to do something about it when he’s given the chance.
After all, what would be the point?
It may sounded profoundly Nolan-esque dark and hopeless but it reflects the view by many people that the world is spiralling out of control and may not be salvageable.
Whether it’s quite that bad is up for debate – certainly I’m not so sure that the conspiracy theorists have really got much of anything right; the world is a mess yes but in some globally conspiratorial way? I’m not so sure – something that Mr. Robot sounds it will tackle in some way.
That’s the good thing about well-done drama – it holds a light up to our humanity and asks all the hard questions we might not otherwise think to ask.
We’ll see how much of a questioning mood Mr. Robot is in when it premieres on USA on 24 June 2015.