AppleTV really has a great track record for shows. They’re not all home runs, but they’re a platform that has a lot of really solid offerings, so much so that I’ll sometimes watch a lesser known show there, just to see how it is. I’d heard a little bit about Murderbot, but not much, honestly. I knew it was sci-fi, and I knew it was about some sort of robot. (So, yeah. I read the title of the series and stopped there.)
When Brandon’s Apple TV deal was announced, I read some people cite Murderbot as an example of Apple doing sci-fi well, so that was enough to get me to want to give it a shot. Denisa and I finished it a week later, so that should be a good metric for how much we enjoyed it.
Really, my only critique would be that its episode lengths are so short that it feels like it would be better done as a mini series (three episodes instead of 10). The whole thing is 3 or 4 hours, so too long for a movie, but the individual episodes were 23 minutes or so. Then again, it makes it very easy to binge (or feel like you’re bingeing, at least), so maybe it’s not a huge issue.
It’s violent, with some language, but it really is a lot of fun. A security robot manages to hack its own software to give itself free will. Since these robots are super overpowered and very dangerous, this is something most humans are terrified of, so the robot tries to remain unnoticed. It ends up getting assigned as security detail to a very unprepared group of humans going to a new planet. That’s all the set up you really need.
If any of that sounds appealing to you, this is a show you should check out. 8/10.