“The series is one part sci-fi adventure, one part workplace comedy, and one part snarky excavation of the nature of free will, all interspersed with some truly hilarious snippets from a futuristic space soap opera. (Yes, really.) It is both genuinely funny and surprisingly moving, a sharp-eyed social commentary, and a meditation on the role of both technology and connection in broader society (in every definition of the word). And most of all? It’s so much fun.”
“Though the pacing improves and the characters’ interactions become more meaningful as the series goes on, when ‘stupid fucking humans’ remains the bulk of the commentary and ‘I don’t have a stomach so I can’t throw up but if I did, I would’ are a representative sample of humour, it feels like a wasted opportunity.”
“Murderbot often seems undecided about what it wants to be. With its short episodes — around 25 minutes — and workplace-comedy set-up, it primes you to expect a sitcom, but it doesn’t have sitcom rhythms or structure. It’s plot-light and its comedy is less in jokes than Murderbot’s observations of humanity. It is, by its nature, largely about just watching people exist, in their myriad peculiar ways.”
“Skarsgard makes Murderbot a success, even if some readers will lament that he isn’t the Murderbot they extrapolated from the page.”
The first two episodes of Murderbot are now streaming on Apple TV+, with new instalments every Friday.
