Episode 8

In today's world of ever-charging technology, a show like "Humans" can serve as an interesting treatise on the ultimate endgame of such technology. Though "Humans" doesn't stray too far from the "careful so that the machines don't take over the humans" theme, it is able to put such a human touch on things that you won't even realize how simple the themes actually are.

For a basic plot summary (minor spoilers), the show is split up into a number of plot angles (at least at first)...

-There's the Hawkins family, consisting of Mom (Katherine Parkinson), Dad (Tom Goodman-Hill), and siblings Mattie (Lucy Carless), Toby (Theo Stevenson), & little Sophie (Pixie Davies). They have just made the decision to buy a Synth, or a mechanical marvel that can interact with humans like nothing before. Anita (Gemma Chan), as they name her, begins to display troubling characteristics that a Synth is not supposed to possess. -Niska (Emily Berrington) is another Synth. Instead of the homemaker status of the above family, Niska is in the sex trade, prostituting her mechanical body for a price. Again, though, there seems to be more behind her eyes than just gears turning. -Leo (Colin Morgan) and Synth Max (Ivanno Jeremiah), a team looking to meet up with both Anita and Niska, hinting that there is indeed something special going on with them conscience-wise. -Dr. George Millican (William Hurt) is having trouble parting with his loyal mechanical buddy, beginning a process that will draw him into the center of a plot involving synths. -Investigators Drummond (Neil Maskell) & Voss (Ruth Bradley) are heading a new task force that involves sniffing around the scenes of strange Synth activities, of which there seems to be plenty happening. -Finally, there is Hobb (Danny Webb), a private investigator who just seems to be putting all these strange Synth-related goings-on into some kind of a context.

The primary reason that "Humans" works as well as it does is because it tells so many different stories all related to the Synths (at least in the early goings). Each story on its own could not have carried the entire torch of this show, but altogether they manage to come at the relevant material from a number of interesting angles. It's science fiction in its purest form, with just enough of a human touch to give it some real emotional depth.

One word of warning: This show aired on AMC, but it is a joint production with a British company. If you are not used to listening to British accents, it may take you a bit to adapt. If that kind of thing bothers you or you have trouble hearing, you may want to watch on a device that enables subtitles. It isn't horrible, just not something I was used to.

The only reason I can't give this the full five-star compliment? I felt like the endgame was set up more to precipitate further episodes than it was to produce a great ending to this current season. I'm a little worried that this seems like a show that was begging to be an "event series", and continuing will be a shaky proposition. I liken it to a show aired in the recent past called "Extant", which had an intriguing first season but immediately became procedural and rote in it's second go-round. Fortunately, "Humans" was better than "Extant" to begin with, and the fact that it airs on cable gives me at least a bit more hope.

Overall, I very much enjoyed watching this show. Despite a glut of shows currently airing that feature technology all over the place, there is surprisingly very little of what I would call "true science fiction" (almost completely idea-based storytelling) in those shows. It was refreshing to see "Humans" take a more traditional approach to the genre, as I'm always looking for new and intriguing ways to ingest a story.

This show passed me by initially; I knew it was on and had heard some positive things, but generally nobody was talking about it and there was nobody breathlessly saying "you gotta watch this" in the way often happens with other shows (rightly and wrongly). However the basic sci-fi plot offers familiar and hopefully fertile ground and the success of the show in ratings and in other regions made me decide to catchup on it. The plot sees a near future where robotics have advanced to the point where robots are not only common in the household, but are also convincingly humanoid in their look and basic actions. We join a family stretched by the demands of life, who decided to buy a synth; although unbeknownst to them, Anita is part of a group of synths who had somehow been programmed as conscious beings, not disposable robots. While the family process their new houseguest, the rest of the group, and other forces, are also looking for her.

In some ways the narrative is overly familiar, with the idea of AI becoming conscious and posing a threat of some form to the idea of humanity – indeed this very familiar plot is probably what hurts the show the most, because we really do know where all this goes. As such the show relies heavily on the detail to make it work, and it doesn't. There are a lot of moving parts here, with different characters, groups, motivations, and events; all of them are solidly interesting but no one part really grips – and nor does the drama as a whole. There are interesting elements here and there (the impact on a teenager of a world where skills can be manufactured, the use of a synth as a sex toy, the devaluing of human endeavors by this particular human endeavor etc) however none of them really snap into place or are done better than the many other places you'll have seen them. It is slow paced too, and doesn't really justify it, and the conclusion is in step with the majority of the season by being a bit wishy-washy and unsatisfying.

The cast are solid throughout, and contains a lot of well-known faces doing decent work, but ultimately the material is not there to the point where they consistently get to do great stuff. As a whole it is a solid season of television, with some good ideas and threads; however mostly it is never more than 'solid' and doesn't shake off the feeling that we have seen a lot of this before, often better, and that Humans doesn't add a huge amount to it. The final episode credits had the legend 'Humans will return', and I guess it had to tell us this because otherwise I would not have seen any other reason to think it would.