TL;DR – While this was a ridiculous romp of a show, beneath that exterior lies a fascinating character piece about identity, free will, and community.

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

Murderbot Review –

Well, we have come to the end of what was an exciting, if odd series. I love my Sci-fi in almost every flavour, and sometimes you want a lighter, silly flair to it. Today’s series that we are exploring has that, indeed, it has that in spades. However, what it also has is an honest heart, which was the bigger surprise, and one that I deeply love to discover.

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 series as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.

The first thing I need to talk about is Alexander Skarsgård’s performance here, because I think it might be the best work I have seen him in. There is such a profound level of nuance to his performance, which is so crucial to the character. On the surface, he is really all one-note, a more than slightly jaded security bot that has finally found free will and wasn’t sure what to do with it, so he just went back to work for a bunch of fools. He balances his desire to keep people alive with the realization that he could kill them all without a second thought.

A jaded robot stuck with fools would have been an interesting premise, but it would also have been very one-note and gotten boring quite quickly. But Alexander Skarsgård and the writers do so well, and it is built upon this foundation with a character that is exploring their own depth in real time as we are watching them. It is reminiscent of Data and the Borg in Star Trek: First Contact, only between Murderbot and the lovable fools he is forced to watch over. Who both fear him, but also profoundly want to champion his innate rights to exist. Alexander Skarsgård is incredibly exposed in this role, and I mean that both figuratively and literally, and you care because he nails that nuance.

Then we have the rest of the crew that have taken the trip out to an unexplored planet, Gurathin (David Dastmalchian), Pin-Lee (Sabrina Wu), Ratthi (Akshay Khanna), Bharadwaj (Tamara Podemski), Arada (Tattiawna Jones), and their leader, Ayda Mensah (Noma Dumezweni). Much like Murderbot, they come off at first as being very stereotypical hippy scientists. All singing in consensus, entering polyamorous contracts, and dressed in all-natural materials. The sort of people you expect to get screwed over by a large corporation. By the end, all of that is still true, but we see all the multitudes that exist in that group once pressure is brought to bear. They become brave, even when it is stupid to be so; they are overly concerned about preserving life when they should be looking out for themselves, and they profoundly care about their constructed family, flaws and all. The standout for me was David Dastmalchian’s Gurathin, who I was honestly surprised by just how much I cared about him by the end.   

There is a lot to recommend about this show, such as how they lean into their sci-fi setting by having a lot of the location work take place in what is clearly a quarry. Though not your standard Welsh quarry, but your more refined Canadian quarry. A lot of the futuristic city settings were clearly filmed in a university somewhere. The themes that the show is working with are not subtle at all, but wearing them on their sleeve makes the show better because it is not hiding away from you. Also, if you were not clear on how much of a love letter this is to classic science fiction, then the frequent jumps into the fictional-show-in-a-show The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon nail that home.         

In the end, do we recommend Murderbot? Yes, yes, we do. Sure, it is very silly at times, but there is also a real heart here that you see throughout the show, and the ending would not have worked unless the whole season supported it. I will say that the short 30ish minute episodes do work best viewed a couple at a time rather than once a week, but your mileage may vary. Have you seen Murderbot yet? Drop your impressions 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, Chris Weitz, Toa Fraser, Aurora Guerrero & Roseanne Lang
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 Anna Konkle, Amanda Brugel, John Cho, Clark Gregg, Jack McBrayer & DeWanda Wise and Christopher Cordell, DL MacDonald, David Reale, Afton Rentz, Ron Kennell, Leah Kilpatrick, Alicia Rosario, Alex Cruz, Chantrina Tram, Josh Cruddas, Sochi Fried, Maroc Rey & Devin Ross
Episodes Covered – FreeCommerce, Eye Contact, Risk Assessment, Escape Velocity Protocol, Rouge War Tracker Infinite, Command Feed, Complementary Species, Foreign Object, All Systems Red & The Perimeter