3 out of 5

Created by: Sam Vincent, Jonathan Brackley

covers season 1

It’s very possible I would not have been watching this if I hadn’t been so thoroughly blown away by the original Swedish version, ‘Real Humans.’  I mean, I definitely would have checked it out, as the premise – a near future where the uncanny valley of robotics has been breached and ‘synths’ are sold as live-in companions – matching ‘Real Humans’ – is intriguing, but whether as a purposeful change from the original or because the UK developers truly felt inspired to go in a different direction, the tone of the series (and characters) is so dour as to be rather boring at times, and the way the main themes are explored never feels very challenging, so I think I would have tuned out pretty early on.  Something kept me hanging in there, though.  Part of it was jealousy…  Y’see, I was pretty dead-set against watching this.  Nothing haughty, I just have a lot of TV to watch, and in general, I don’t feel compelled to watch remakes, or, if I’ve watched the remake, the original.  Movies are a different story, since it’s a compressed format, but with TV… I dunno.  You’ll hear sometimes that one format or another took things in a crazy different direction, and sometimes that’s enough to draw me in, but for the most part, the beats are the same, just some twists are different for kicks, and so I don’t know if it’s worth it, even when one is considered superior to the other.  The Swedish version of this show did so much so right with its topic, even if the UK remake matched it in quality, it wouldn’t be worth it time-wise.  B-b-b-but the wiki entry suggests a third season of Real Humans ain’t likely, and I figured the remake would be madly popular and on a station (AMC) that would afford three seasons and beyond… so I was jealous that I’d actually end up falling behind the story by not watching.  Sigh.

Still, that tone, that pacing, those characters… nothing was drawing me in.  And the changes made felt forced and rather unwise, rendering certain characters less likeable and certain story elements way less interesting.

But the performances were good, and by the fourth or so episode, I accepted that the alterations were turning this into a different show.  Something simpler, and yet more ‘serious’ than the original, but respectably its own thing.  At which point I became intrigued enough to keep going.

‘Humans’ doesn’t end up doing too much with its sci-fi, stalling on a run-away-from-the-bad-guys bit for too long, as our main-characters family takes in a group of synths who’ve gained consciousness (much to the threat OF THE WORLD), but it’s a confidently produced, well-acted bit of drama that managed to surprisingly stake its own claim to its concept.