TL;DR – A fascinatingly weird start that kept me wondering from beginning to end.

Disclosure – I paid for the AppleTV+ service that viewed this show.

Murderbot Review –

There is a lot of sameness out there in the world of entertainment; if you have seen one police procedural, generally you have seen them all, irrespective of whether they have a dun-dun sound. But when you do stumble into something new, something weird, something quite odd, well, that is something to cherish.  

So, to set the scene, we open on the Mining Station Aratake in the Corporation Rim. Here, all the miners are celebrating the end of the mining expedition 115-24TTX. The one person not celebrating is the Security Unit, which has to follow human orders and tries to keep them safe. But as he is sitting there, he is able to hack the Governor Module in his head, thus Security Unit 238776431 did not have the right ring to it, so it became Murderbot (Alexander Skarsgård). He was a free bot, but given the corporation would kill him the moment they discovered he was rogue, which is how he ended up on Mining Survey 0Q17Z4Y, with more humans, ones who just might care about him, because they were weird. Now, from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.   

There are a lot of fish out of water series out there, but usually there is just the one odd duckling trying to fit in, like a Rookie, or a Novelist, or well, you get the idea. Here, that is sort of what is happening, but what if everyone was profoundly out of their depths? The survey team is clearly ill-equipped for what they would find on the planet or the incompetencies [real or constructed] of The Corporation. At the same time, Murderbot is profoundly not ready to deal with humans that seem to genuinely care for him, even though they didn’t want him there in the beginning. Murderbot is trying not to get caught out as a rogue unit, all the while acting more weirdly, which is drawing more attention to his roguishness.  

This dichotomy only works because all the cast is there for how odd it is and leans into it for complete comedic effect. I have seen Alexander Skarsgård in a lot of things, but I think this might be the first sort of comedy that I have seen him in. While he is still sort of playing the straight man in the situation, his timing and oddness really nail the brief. Add to this with some delightful Star Trek parodies going on in the background, which, thanks to John Cho, reminded me that we should have gotten a follow-up to Star Trek Beyond. The location work, the casting, even the camera positioning, all contribute to this feeling of oddness, and I loved it.

In the end, do we recommend Murderbot? Yes, we would. Now, this is only the first episode, and maybe it doesn’t have the legs to take this premise for a full season. But at the moment, I am captivated by what I watch, and will be tuning in for the rest of the season. Have you seen Murderbot yet? Let us know what you thought in the comments below.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Murderbot
Directed by – Paul Weitz
Written by – Paul Weitz & Chris Weitz
Created by – Paul Weitz & Chris Weitz
Based On – All Systems Red by Martha Wells
Production/Distribution Companies – Depth of Field, Phantom 4, Paramount Television Studios & AppleTV+
Starring – Alexander Skarsgård, Noma Dumezweni, David Dastmalchian, Sabrina Wu, Akshay Khanna, Tamara Podemski & Tattiawna Jones with John Cho, Clark Gregg, Jack McBrayer & DeWanda Wise and Josh Cruddas, Sochi Fried, Maroc Rey & Devin Ross