Why Humans Is the Scariest Show on TV
Pop culture is littered with tales of artificial intelligence that are meant to make audiences fear the rise of the machines and the eventual rule of our robot overlords.
Set in a "parallel present," Humans -- which is a co-production between AMC and the U.K.'s Channel 4, which debuted the show a couple weeks ago -- imagines a world where people live alongside synthetic beings that can clean your house, cook your dinner or even check your blood pressure.
[...] although the show clearly suggests that some of these Synths are more than mindless cans filled with wires and code, the dread stems from just how un-sci-fi this world feels now that our iPhones talk to us and help us organize our life.
Yes, we have our heads in our iPhones and don't talk to each other, but at the same time we have a device in our pocket that has the entirety of recorded history available to you at the touch of a button, which is a great thing.
The decision is met with the approval of both teenage son Toby (Theo Stevenson) -- mostly thanks to his raging hormones -- and youngest daughter Sophie (Pixie Davies), who is thrilled to have a surrogate mommy read her bedtime stories.
More skeptical are eldest daughter Mattie (Lucy Carless), who is blowing off her schoolwork since Synths are securing the jobs of the future and Laura, who is nervous about how this new technology will impact her children's development.
There is something buried deep within her that she hasn't revealed to anyone and it's eating at her.
Because she's so busy and her job takes her away, she thinks she's failing in very single aspect of her life.
(In fact, Hobb is the closest thing the show has to an antagonistic force, but it's hard to really qualify him as a villain.) "We didn't want to have a true villain or hero," executive producer Sam Vincent says.
Perhaps the most moving and illuminating corner of the show involves Dr. George Millican (William Hurt), an engine