Should You Get Charged Up For AMC's Robot Drama Humans?

What Is This Thing?

In the London of the near future, androids -- known as "synths," short for "synthetics" -- have become so advanced and affordable that not only have they replaced humans in jobs such as agricultural worker, cafeteria server, and leaflet distributor: they can also be purchased to perform domestic work in the home. But biological humans might not be that psyched about this arrangement if they knew that some of the newest models have been programmed with human qualities...like consciousness.

When Is It On?

Sundays at 9 PM on AMC, starting June 28.

Why Was It Made Now?

Because Britain's Channel 4 -- which is airing episodes two weeks ahead of their U.S. airdates -- has become the home of shivery dystopic TV: see also Black Mirror and the late, lamented Utopia -- but also because the exploration of how dependent we are on our electronic assistants, and also exactly what makes a person a person, are evergreen. (Hell, even Ted 2 is "investigating" the latter.)

What's Its Pedigree?

Producers Sam Vincent and Jonathan Brackley, both formerly of Spooks (a.k.a. MI5) based their adaptation on the Swedish series Äkta människor ("Real Humans") and stocked it with British character actors you've already seen a lot: Tom Goodman-Hill (Spy, Mr. Selfridge) and Katherine Parkinson (The I.T. Crowd, The Honourable Woman) are Joe and Laura, heads of the Hawkins family in one story skein in the pilot; since Laura's been working out of town a lot -- or possibly staying away because she's getting ready to leave the family for good -- Joe decides, without consulting her, to purchase a synth to help him with the house and the kids. Colin Morgan (Merlin, The Fall) plays Leo, part of what appears to be an Underground Railroad for highly advanced synths. Neil Maskell (Utopia) is D.S. Drummond, a cop focusing on synth incidents. And William Hurt (everything) is George Millican, an aging widower trying to hide from the NHS the fact that his home-care assistant synth Odi -- played by Game Of Thrones star Will Tudor -- is doing the synth version of dying; George can't let go of Odi because, it seems, Odi is the only one who still remembers George's late wife Mary.

...And?

As one would hope from the people who brought Utopia and Black Mirror into our lives to freak us the fuck out: Humans is pretty great. It shares a composer with Utopia (Cristobal Tapia de Veer), and right from the opening scene, the score situates us in an eerie setting, imbuing one woman -- or womanoid product -- craning her neck to look at the moon feel extremely unsettling. (The fact that she's doing it in a warehouse full of placid androids helps.) But the creepy implications of Joe's purchase of the synth -- which his daughter Sophie decides to name Anita, after a friend of hers who moved away -- start to show even before we find out that Anita was one of the conscious androids Leo has been trying to free from their unwilling servitude: his older daughter Mattie is sufficiently hostile to synths that she shoots a neighbour's with a BB gun when it's just trying to pick up some leaves in the yard, but that's a lesser assault Anita may need to look out for if Joe's smitten look when Anita's sales clerk unzips her bag is anything to go by.

This comes later.

And so may Joe! It actually takes a surprisingly long time before the episode explicitly lays out (as it were) the obvious fact that in this world, some synths are used for sex: one of the other ones Leo's tried to rescue is working in a brothel and, because she can feel emotions and pain, not happy about it. This is why the grim realities of some synths' existence is balanced by the tender George/Odi plotline, all the more heartbreaking given that it seems clear it can't be headed anywhere good.

But our way into the story is the Hawkins family, and how living in synth times affects them. While Mattie feels hopeless about her future -- what's the point in excelling in school, she asks, if at the end of her seven years' training to become a physician, synths will be perfectly competent brain surgeons? -- Laura is uneasy about the ways Anita is already displacing her around the house, first asking her not to look in on Sophie while she sleeps and then not even to touch her. By the time Laura has to tell Anita not to go outside after the family's gone to bed, her scolding Mattie not to treat Anita like a slave feels like a distant memory. Isn't Anita a slave? Is it her very human face that makes Laura so conflicted? How would The Hand That Rocks The Cradle be a different story if the usurping nanny were full of servos instead of guts? So many philosophical questions to dig into, and they all make the show as exciting and challenging to watch as it is chilling.

...But?

As in all premium cable dramas, the younger brother character already feels so extraneous that I had to look on IMDb to find out his name. (It's Toby, but seriously, don't bother remembering it.) And I'm already not that interested in the synth bounty hunter, Hobb, though I guess Leo has to have an antagonist we can see.

...So?

It's a very strong pilot and I can't wait to see more. If you liked Channel 4's other two big sci-fi series, this one is definitely worth checking out.