Crazy Diamond

"Sales Pitch" by PKD is a decent little story, a funny take on over-intrusive advertising. It actually could have more resonance these days with the advent of ad companies that exist to spy on users and sell their personal information to the highest bidder, like Google and Facebook. But instead of maybe taking the story more in that direction, this idiocy ditches any semblance of the PKD story except a couple character names and replaces it with basically nothing. There is nothing of any interest at all in this episode, just an incoherent mess and a complete waste of time.

If it weren't for a fascination with Steve Buscemi I wouldn't have stayed with this. It's about a future where there is little food and some replicants called Jacks and Jills do the labor. Of course, with most artificial intelligence in sci fi, eventually they begin to rebel. I have little else to say. The plot is a mess and we aren't given enough information to really understand the world we are witnessing. Oh, who's in charge? What are the motivations?

This episode isn't uniformly great, but it has all of the interesting angles and moral dilemmas that populate the best of Dick's stories. Steve Buscemi is perfect as Ed, a shabby man with a good heart who nevertheless keeps making bad decisions. Sidse Babett Knudsen (Westworld) is engaging in the femme fatale role of Jill, tempting Ed less with her sexuality and more with her cunning insight into his prosaic dreams. There are a lot of fascinating ideas that percolate just under the surface, such as why the world needs replicants or DNA spliced humans and why everything seems like it is running down into ruin. Unfortunately, they remain window dressing, but the story itself is clever and thoughtful.

SPOILER: I was less impressed by this episode of Channel 4"s Philip K Dick anthology than others I've watched in the series. Set in the bleak mid-future, it pits hangdog Steve Buscemi as an ordinary average cog in the workaday scheme of things, working in a government scientific facility producing regenerative medicine, living with his childless, nervous wife in their modern house seemingly content, if not exactly happy with his lot.

In this alternative future, however, there is a shortage of natural foodstuffs, so that all things edible have a limited life span, coastal erosion is an everyday occurrence and the population is bolstered by so-called "Jack's" and "Jill's" of seemingly artificially created beings of human appearance.

Our hero is mildly rebellious however as we see him try to grow his own food and also escape the drudgery of his boring existence by retreating to his boat where he plays vinyl records. Then, into his life steps a beautiful femme-fatale, ostensibly trying to sell him life cover but in truth she wants a supply of the life-giving serums, both for commercial gain and also to save her own failing metabolism.

This story had its moments, especially a nightmarish opening and its depiction of not so sweet suburbia in the near-future but for me had too much going on, taking in as it did, a terrorist gang desperate to get its hands on the toxins, a half-pig, half-woman being who dispenses marital advice to Buscemi's wife and in the end a weird union of sorts between the Jill and the wife which leaves him effectively seduced and abandoned by the finish.

I also didn't get the use of Pink Floyd references, from the episode title, to Buscemi's character name of Syd Barrett to the background music. The acting was good though, besides Buscemi, I enjoyed seeing "Borgen's" Sidse Babette Knudson as the double-dealing temptress and Julia Davis as the seemingly timorous wife. I also liked the cinematography, filmed in wash-out grey tones as well as the set design of the house of tomorrow.

No, this story of another brick in the wall who who'd outstayed his welcome to the machine was just a little too madcap for me, sorry.

Horrible. I had to watch it twice and still was like "Huh?" Finally, I came here to find out what was going on. I can usually understand these by the end but this one just left m confused. Thanks to the reviewers on this site, I figured it out. On to the next one.