Humans

[A] compelling, smartly acted new co-production from AMC and Britain's Channel 4 that explores who we are and how fragile our own grip on humanity can be.

In the first two episodes, Humans looks like a promising excursion into familiar territory, and one that plays well on several levels. It’s a domestic drama, a sci-fi thriller, and a meditation on alienation, all wrapped up in one sleek package.

While a subplot involving a John Brown-type Synth liberator, Leo (“Merlin’s” Colin Morgan), is a heavy-handed distraction, Humans holds up as a slightly humorous, thought-provoking, creepy piece of sci-fi filled with sympathetic performances and solid writing.

Humans is a clever piece of work.

The Synths start to act in unexpected ways, and several ominous developments warn us that artificial intelligence must be controlled and directed. What stays with us about Humans, though, are the reminders of all the little ways things will change once we hand part of our lives over to robots.

And yet, given how derivative it is, (say it with me now), Humans turns out far better than you'd think possible. The performances, pacing and direction are that compellingly good, at least in the first two episodes made available to critics.

Humans, a British product based on a Swedish series, feels fresh nonetheless, thanks to a multiple-plotline approach, a deft cast and its refusal to be simplistic.

The show is at its best when it digs into the psychological subtleties of the synth-human relationship, including the notion that, with their precision and regularity, they could render us inferior, helpless, and despairingly unambitious.

While the past few TV seasons have had more than a few robot shows, this one bears watching, largely because it doesn’t insist there’s a “robots are good” or “robots are bad” way of thinking.

A charming, exciting, and impeccably written sci-fi drama for grown-ups.

Like the dystopian British anthology Black Mirror, Humans is a sci-fi premise smartly reimagined for our own age of tech outsourcing.

Humans finds a way to bring intrigue to a very familiar conflict.

Humans intelligently adds to this decades-long conversation [what it means to be human] with strong writing, interesting performances, and, most of all, an eerie, disconcerting tone that forces us to question exactly what we want to happen.

A stylish, intelligent production.

In a vacuum, the series is a solid, if not thrilling, piece of classic science fiction, exploring questions about the line between man and robot, whether computers can have souls, and whether mankind is destined to be rendered obsolete by the machines we're creating.

It's familiar sci-fi territory, of course, but the show tackles it in intriguing style while delivering some suspenseful touches.

Humans does introduce some intriguing scenarios that may, or may not, pay off.

For now, though, it's a familiar-looking drama that raises some less familiar questions about the things that makes us human--and the things that threaten to rob us of our humanity.

This main narrative of Humans, which is based on a Swedish series and written by Sam Vincent and Jonathan Brackley, is solid if somewhat familiar; the truth and beauty of the series lies in the various B plots.

Some beats are poignant.... But there's nothing here that Blade Runner; I, Robot; Black Mirror; and many more haven't done before and done better. [26 Jun 2015, p.56]

Most of Humans' characters are bores, and the story unfolds with the stately pacing of the typical cable drama.

Simultaneously juggling a quartet of plots is hardly unusual for the modern major drama, but Humans doesn’t wring much life (artificial or otherwise) from any of them. And while there are unexpected twists and mysteries that linger through the second hour, they’re not compelling enough to arouse much curiosity about where they might begin to intersect.

The scripts are adequate and many of the performances are effective. In spite of revisiting familiar territory, Humans could be more engaging if it had a greater sense of urgency. As it is, the show is, you should pardon the expression, just a tad too robotic.