The best robot show since Battlestar Galactica is Real Humans. And it didn’t come from a country with a big special effects industry or one known for big-budget spectacles; it came from Sweden.
The two hottest areas for television exports right now are Scandinavia (for its dark, noir-ish shows like The Killing, Borgen, and The Bridge (with 2 English adaptations already) in addition to the Millennium Trilogy) and Israel (for its political thrillers such as Homeland and Hostages (both based on Israeli shows) and singing competition Rising Star, wildly popular enough in Israel for multiple countries (including ABC in America) to buy rights for local versions of it). Real Humans is another feather in Scandinavia’s cap.
I started watching Real Humans around the same time FOX premiered the similarly-named, also-concerning-robots Almost Human. After giving it the 2-episode trial period, I gave up on it. It wasn’t particularly bad, it was actually getting better when I left it, but in my crowded TV watching playlist, it just wasn’t good enough to keep up with the pack, and felt more an obligation or chore to watch.
And for the first several episodes of Real Human’s 10-episode first season, it kind of felt that way too, especially with a 58-minute runtime each episode. But it grew on me.
It doesn’t move particularly fast, but it doesn’t move particularly slow either, it moves at a suitable pace to soak in and explore and delve into all the facets of a world where robots, or as they’re known on the show, hubots (I’m assuming a portmanteau for humanoid robots), are as commonplace and integrated into society as smartphones are today.
The show’s strength is in its clusters of characters; plots are mostly contained within each cluster, who mostly interact with other characters in their clusters, with plots and characters occasionally intertwining between clusters. They have a middle-class white-collar family, getting their first hubot, a domestic model for cleaning and cooking, after replacing an outdated model for their grandfather who’s emotionally attached to the older hubot model and tries to adjust to the new, sterner hubot. There’s a band of ‘liberated’ hubots, more capable of free thought than standard hubots, hiding out from forces wanting to shut them down. Another family is torn by the gruff, sometimes-violent anti-hubot father who’s seen his factory become more and more automated with hubots and the mother who begins a romantic relationship with her hubot and the son stuck in the middle. Season 2 introduces a youth league of anti-hubot, real human proponents. Instead of focusing on too many fantastical sci-fi elements, the show stews in its exploration of what life would really be like if we had robots in our life that could do all sorts of tasks for us: keeping the house clean, looking after elderly relatives, receptionists and secretaries at companies, drivers, salespeople, personal assistants, companions, even the seamier side of sex bots.
The best sci-fi really aren’t about the most fantastical elements, the flying cars and self-cleaning dishes, it explores social, economic, geopolitical issues in subtle ways under the guise of robots and technology and the like. And Real Humans does that. It doesn’t take much of a stretch of the imagination to see parallels in the storylines with issues of today: how to care for the elderly in a humane, yet efficient, manner; positions being eliminated as automated technology replaces humans; negative sentiments towards immigrants in lesser domestic/manual labor positions; a young male feels like there’s something wrong with him after growing attracted toward his hubot and, after a trip to a psychologist, is diagnosed with “TransRobotic Sexuality.” The Real Human Youth plotline in season 2 in particular, a group of youths who dream of a world where hubots are eradicated, harassing hubots and their owners, abstaining from clothing, food, or products made with hubot labor, is strongly reminiscent of the Hitler Youth. They even dress in a particular, clean-cut manner that just falls short of a Hitler Youth uniform. This probably strikes an even stronger chord in Europe as immigration become more of a hot button issue amidst economic malaise in many EU countries.
Season 2 built nicely on season 1, though I found that towards the end it became a bit scatterbrained with a couple prominent plots just not quite doing it for me. Interestingly, it takes 2 fairly minor, secondary characters from season 1 and gives them a lot more screen time. Florentine, part of the liberated hubot resistance in the first season, had her biggest moment in season 1 after criticizing the lifestyle of the lesbian couple allowing the hubots to hide out in their attic. In season 2, she gets her own story line (eventually intertwining with the domestic family’s) of wooing a young suitor and marrying rich only for him to die, her to be exposed as a hubot, and being part of a precedent-setting showdown in court over his will (which I think nicely explored how some court cases can balloon into precedent-setting trials such as Roe v. Wade and such). Another character, Silas, appeared for a handful of episodes in season 1 alongside his brother, illegally reworking and re-programming hubots and reselling them. He takes a far more visible role in season 2, working alongside a mysterious-guy-in-a-mask who’s working on a special code that could potentially liberate all hubots. There’s also another hubot from season 1, Odi, who was the antiquated hubot of the grandfather character who gets separated from him at the end of season 1. After Silas loses his brother, Odi becomes a surrogate companion for Silas. I really liked how they framed Odi as first being the friend and companion for an elderly man who lives alone, and then for Silas after losing his brother. Odi is outdated, damaged, antiquated, has a broken battery pack requiring him to be plugged into an electrical outlet at all times, and yet both the grandfather character and Silas value him greatly as a friend. It’s a warm relationship that showcases a side of a hubot-filled world that’s not fantastical or too sci-fi, rather it’s sort of an extension and growth of some people’s attachments to their pets today. Someone might take in an ugly stray off of the street, but grow to love it.
Another character worth mentioning in season 2 is Bea. She was more of a heroine in season 1, but takes a darker turn in season 2, some might find the change too jarring or sudden, but it made her character more interesting, antagonistic almost, in a win-at-all-costs manner.
There’s a plot involving a virus in season 2 that could’ve easily been overplayed, but they emphasized it just the right amount, it plays throughout the season but sometimes goes a couple episodes without a mention. The best moment for this plotline happens when one of the hubots, realizing that they’re infected with the virus which will render them useless, comes to terms with the inevitability that they’ll be shut down. Their realization mirrors a person’s acceptance of death, say, after learning they have a terminal disease. The spread of the virus mirrors pandemics such as H1N1 as well as the moore prominent computer viruses.
The acting is quite good all around. There’s a multitude of characters and they’re all uniformly good, it’s hard to pick a stand-out but Mimi, Florentine, Bea, Inger are quite good. And the guy who plays Tobbe, the one with ‘THR,’ was the kid who played Oskar in Let the Right One In.
By grounding this show and not making it too fantastical, this show works. It humanizes the hubots; and that they have power cords that are USB cords makes it a bit more relatable to today’s world.
The make-up for the hubot characters also must be mentioned. It gives the hubots an artificial look, hitting a weird place between plastic-looking and human-looking, a bit like Jude Law’s character in AI but not quite to that extent. The movement of the hubots are also intriguing, it’s not completely robotic, but not quite human either. It’s a bit rigid and stiff, they don’t move with the flexibility or fluidity of people, their movements feel very precise and concerted.
No word on whether Real Humans will ever hit American TVs, I doubt SyFy would pick it up seeing as how it’d be a subtitled show (though they’ve shown some willingness to broadcast foreign shows by picking up Australia’s super fun ‘The Almighty Johnsons’). I could see Sundance Channel picking it up as they focus on quality, niche programming and picked up broadcast rights to France’s sublime Les Revenants, though Real Humans doesn’t have quite the same level of acclaim or high profile as Revenants.
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