Human Is

I'm really starting to warm to PKDED. Having just come off watching the Black Mirror series, the anthology-style scifi is clearly developing nicely as a renewed genre and Human Is, with great performances by Brian Cranston and Australia Essie Davis really pushed a lot of buttons for me. Sexy, nicely shot and it makes the most of a slightly predictable but well paced story. It's got its flaws - the extended 'uptown gal goes downtown for a sexy time' scene is one of them - but in overall it gives me lots of encouragement to keep watching. However, if we still have to wear stockings in the year 2520, that will suck a LOT.

Excellent episode which asks, what is love? What does it mean? When you find it in the least likely place, do you turn away from it? Brian Cranston does an excellent job of portraying his character. The emotions of both the leads are intense.

An interesting episode to ponder upon its concept. Well acted, well made, but somewhat lacking in directed flow. Would have been nearly sufficient to have the two leads and nobody else around them, figuratively. Brilliant acting by the two leads.

This episode of "Philip K. DIck's Electric Dreams is nearly superb. I own that I only scored it a nine from the possible 10 because the pace is a little slow and the film is a touch dark for me. However, Cranston's performance impelled me to a nine because here is a 61 year old man who does a sex scene and it is believable.

Now for some disclosure: this sex scene does avoid frontal nudity of Cranston. However, his passion that seemingly comes through for me and Davis's reaction (the actress playing his wife) is 100% on target.

Some have negatively reacted to this episode in that Cranston and Davis are not passionate enough AND that this ending is unambiguous. Certainly, I disagree with the first assertion above and do concede the second. However, just because the ending is unambiguous does not limit the episode's effect on the viewer. I was as moved here as I was in "The Matrix" "episodes one and two. If a video effectiveness can be measured the viewers reaction, you have to acknowledge my score and you have to watch this episode and let the events happen (with a certain degree of Cranston's back story creeping in.

If you watch this episode with the guidance I have noted here, you will be moved and you will certainly enjoy this episode. If you allow a preconceived judgment shape your experience, then you will not like this episode as much as some of the others. So you decide and watch,

Another good episode in what is proving to be my favourite new TV series of the year. Before he comes back from leading an almost disastrous mission of plunder to a neighbouring planet for a vital chemical element, Bryan Cranston's Silas Merick character, a senior army officer, is clearly bored with his senior government adviser wife Vera, played by Essie Davis. There's no sexual spark between them as he treats her as coldly in their private as well as public life, driving her to seek solace in an underground sex-cellar at night and virtual jogging in the daytime.

However when she attends to him after his near-death injuries from the mission she's surprised and initially disconcerted by his apparently softened demeanour and even renewed sexual attraction towards her. Is this really the same unfeeling, unrelenting man she previously knew or has he been somehow changed after his near-fatal encounter with the inhabitants of the planet Rexor who can possess shape-shifting capabilities. Matters come to a head when Merick goes on trial, accused of being a surreptitious Rexorian - is Merick human or not, it seems his wife's testimony will determine whether he lives or dies.

Cranston, one of the series' executive producers, and Davis are very good as the central couple and the central theme of what defines humanity is well argued and indeed resolved by the end. I could have done without the mildly pornographic depictions of sex in the underworld that Davis witnesses plus the fashions of the future as depicted here seem positively turgid, but the central story was otherwise effectively told in another entertaining and thought-provoking episode of this continuing anthology.