A robot gaining sentience by hacking its system and having homicidal thoughts? Set in the future, Murderbot, adapted from Martha Wells’ series The Murderbot Diaries, explores the life and thoughts of a robot trying to hide their newly reached level of consciousness, living among humans that they apparently despise.
What used to be a Security Unit is sent on a mission to protect The PreservationAux survey team, a group of scientists, during their research on another planet. Being what (who?) it is, Murderbot (Alexander Skarsgård), as they secretly call themself, spends their time analyzing, studying and criticizing them, their human habits, the way they interact, all this in the secrecy of their thoughts, while avoiding eye contact at all cost and spying on them through the cameras of the security system. Sentience gave them free will but their favorite thing to do is watch videos and TV shows on the job. Which is the irony of the situation. Murderbot gained a conscious and immediately turned to online entertainment and obnoxious screen time to the point of ditching their duties and risking the lives of those they’re supposed to protect. A true human at heart.
Now, this is a comedy, so the tone is not exactly serious but more of a sort of dark-ish humor. Murderbot is made of negative thoughts about humans, and as we follow their inner monologue that really articulates the show through the character, it becomes clear that having a consciousness comes with too many questions they can’t really understand without guidance.
The episodes are short (25 minutes), which is a good choice. Murderbot doesn’t have a strong plot but could have a strong character depending on its development. All the questioning, the observation, the paranoia that comes with secrets, all this could make of Murderbot a character that embodies life as someone who doesn’t quite fit in a world they don’t really want to be a part of while being fully aware of it.
Murderbot is streaming on Apple TV+.
