Murderbot Season One Review

I had some very high hopes for Murderbot, AppleTV+’s adaptation of Martha Wells’ spectacular “The Murderbot Diaries” book series. Last summer, on the recommendation of my friend Alice, I started the first book in the series, “All Systems Red,” (which is the premise for this initial season of Murderbot). I burned through that book, and the additional six currently available in the series, in the span of three months. I never do that, but the world and characters Wells has crafted are so rich, interesting, and fun that I couldn’t stop reading. So, when I say high expectations, I mean high expectations. And I am happy to report that Murderbot met nearly all of them – although often in ways I wasn’t expecting.

For the uninitiated, Murderbot tells the story of a SecurityUnit (think a Terminator-type robot) charged with the protection of a team of scientists on what should be a pretty mundane trip to a planet. Of course, it’s not. For one thing, that SecUnit (played by Alexander Skarsgard)? Well, it hacked its governor module (the thing that lets humans control it) and is now fully sentient. Which would be a terrifying, if it actually wanted to be, well, violent. Lucky for the humans under its protection, all SecUnit really wants to do is watch TV. Specifically, The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon*. So, the humans needing its help and protection really puts a kink in it getting to watch its stories.

*The series is a space soap opera with a cast that includes Jack McBrayer, Clark Gregg, DeWanda Wise, and John Cho. And yes, fans of the books, we do get to see multiple clips from the series and yes, it’s just as ridiculous and silly as you imagined it would be – SecUnit’s taste in television is just as bad as the humans around it say it is.

Now, a series just about how a sentient robot bred to maim and kill slowly learns to tolerate humans – while still getting time to watch TV – would be amusing. But Murderbot is much more than just that. The team of scientists SecUnit (while it has chosen Murderbot as its personal name, it goes by SecUnit with its protectees) is assigned to protect are from Preservation, a “hippy” planet where there is little crime, family and community are central to daily life, and capitalism is present, but not a huge influence on society. In fact, those from that planet are dismayed at the horrific abuses meted out by the very capitalistic planets that surround it. Led by Dr. Mensah (a wonderful Noma Dumezweni), the team is a bit of a mess. Especially when it turns out that perhaps this planet isn’t exactly what they thought it was. And there might just be outside forces trying to keep them from discovering some things the team is getting dangerously close to finding.

A two-pronged narrative drives the season, for good and for ill. On the one hand, we have SecUnit, our unreliable narrator (its disgust at humanity and all its emotions and romantic entanglements means it doesn’t always see the best in its charges – often with good cause). It’s a difficult role to tackle, a character who isn’t quite human yet still appears to be mostly human. And to be honest, it is a tad jarring at first as a book reader to see SecUnit is a clear gender and so human, when the version in the books is very much agendered. But I’m happy to report that, once you move past that, Skarsgard is very good in the role, although it takes him several episodes to really get in the groove of the character. SecUnit must be aloof but still relatable, simple yet still able to recognize – if not appreciate – the complex emotions of humans. And SecUnit needs to have a dry sense of humor to keep us, the audience, engaged.

On the other side of the story is everything happening to the humans. From the political ramifications of the events on the planet (and there are a lot of those, although the series doesn’t get too deep into the ins and outs of the truly atrocious capitalistic society within the galaxy) to the interpersonal lives of the scientists, there’s a lot of story we get through SecUnit’s eyes, but we also don’t get it at a deep enough level for it to really resonate. Because, after all, SecUint doesn’t care all that much about relationships and the political climate. Its job is to protect those under its care, and, despite being able to refuse orders, it still doesn’t want to see the humans all die. And there are definitely serious dangers to them on the planet.

And here’s where I had some quibbles with the series. While the tone in the books is very clear – our narrator is SecUnit and its sardonic take on events is what we are presented with – the tone in the series gets muddled throughout. The series leans heavily into the comedy side of the story, highlighting the ridiculous things about the humans repeatedly. The characters of Pin-Lee (Sabrina Wu), Arada (Tattiawna Jones), and Ratthi (Akshay Kanna), who decide to try to form a throuple relationship while on the planet in what I found to be the worst arc of the series, spend the most time being shockingly dense and making truly awful choices (Ratthi, in particular, is just hopeless on nearly every level). These three and their heightened actions are often in contrast to the much more grounded characters of Mensah, Bharadwaj (Tamara Podemski), and Gurathin (David Dastmalchian, for my money, the best part of the series), often resulting in tonal whiplash as we swing from groan-inducing relationship drama to genuine emotional struggles and complexities. It’s fine to make the series a comedy with action sequences, but you have to find a balance between the jokes and the more nuanced storytelling.

Having said that, clocking in at roughly a half hour per episode, Murderbot does fly by. The season arc is taut, Skarsgard and Dastmalchain are well worth the price of admission (and every scene they have together is spectacular), and the fight sequences are pretty solid. You’ll be hard pressed not to fall in love with our frustrated SecUnit narrator and root for it to give the humans around it a chance (especially Mensah, the calming presence in the series). If you’re a fan of the books, you’ll be happy with this adaptation, which follows the story with just enough additions to make it interesting. And if you’ve never read a page, you’ll be charmed by Skarsgard and this interesting world. It’s not a perfect show, but it is a fun one.

Murderbot premieres with two episodes on May 16 on AppleTV+. All ten episodes of the season were provided for review.