Alexander Skarsgård stars as the self-named Murderbot, a security droid who has hacked his own systems, freeing him from the requirement to take orders from humans. Yet he must still play along enough to deceive the members of the planetary expedition he's been assigned to. He'd rather just take time to watch his favorite TV shows, but those hapless humans keep putting themselves in mortal danger.
After finishing (and mostly enjoying) All Systems Red years ago, I didn't continue on with the Murderbot Diaries series. In retrospect, I think I allowed my expectations to get the better of me. I had listened to the story in ignorance, enjoying the quirky tone that author Martha Wells had brought to her pastiche of science fiction tropes. Then after the fact, I heard of all the prestigious awards the novella had won, decided "I didn't think it was that good," and drifted away from the follow-ups.
This new Murderbot series gives me a new re-entry point, and I think it's just different enough in all the right ways that this time, it just might stick. If the problem was that the Murderbot Diaries didn't seem like prestige fiction to me, then "problem" solved: Murderbot the TV series does not feel anything like "prestige television."
The series turns up the volume on quirkiness of the source material. The core behavior of each of the human characters is magnified -- everyone a shade odder, more irrational, more creepy, what-have-you. It's possible they aren't even tweaked that much, but that the mere fact of having them embodied by a solid cast of skilled actors makes it feel that way. David Dastmalchian is the one I readily recognized from other work, but it's really a well-cast ensemble throughout, including Noma Dumezweni, Sabrina Wu, Akshay Khanna, Tamara Podemski, and Tattiawna Jones. Together, they really nail the comedy of it all.
Yes, I said comedy, because Murderbot definitely leans into the humor of Wells' writing. This science fiction show is in a half-hour format -- and we're talking half an hour that leaves room for commercials (if there were any). Each of the 10 episodes of season 1 breezes by faster than you could ever imagine. And you have to pay attention, lest one of Alexander Skarsgård's quippy voice-overs slips by unnoticed.
Those TV shows that the Murderbot loves so much? In the series, you get to actually see scenes from them, starring the likes of John Cho, Clark Gregg, Jack McBrayer, and DeWanda Wise. That ensemble within the ensemble serves up the hammiest sci-fi you've ever seen, almost hitting too close to home in showcasing how thin a line really exists between Your Favorite Sci-Fi Series and... whatever this is.
It feels like the mission statement of Murderbot (the show) is to have fun, first and foremost -- a tone well-telegraphed from the opening credits (frenetic animation backed by slightly wacky theme music) to the exasperated voice-over that invariably ends each episode. I give Murderbot a B+. I'm looking forward to the recently-announced season two. And between now and then, I might just make it back to the books that started it all.
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