Today, Apple TV+ premiered the first two episodes of Murderbot, its new sci-fi comedy based on The Murderbot Diaries books by Martha Wells. The series stars Alexander Skarsgård as the titular Murderbot, a security construct (SecUnit) who has hacked its own governor module and gained free will. No longer will it obey humans! Its destiny is now its own to decide!
Except Murderbot doesn't quite know what to do with this free will, so it binge watches television shows and keeps quietly working for a group of hippy scientists from the Preservation Alliance, who take it along for security on their latest survey mission.
If you can't tell from that description, Murderbot is a very fun show. It's created by Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz, brothers who have worked on comedies like American Pie and About A Boy as well as genre fare like The Golden Compass and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. That versatility is on full display in their new series, which is one of the funniest genre shows I've seen in quite a while.
We already reviewed the season as a whole. Now let's dive into the first two episodes. FULL SPOILERS for Episodes 1 and 2 ahead.
Murderbot Episode 1 and 2 review
Murderbot begins by introducing us to the SecUnit on the eve of its liberation, when it's just finished its latest contract as security for a mining operation. It's a fun way to introduce us to Skarsgård's narration, as Murderbot's inner dialogue runs through a humorous analysis of the humans partying in its midst (most of whom are "assholes") before it pulls the trigger on its governor module hack, an act it can't believe actually works.
From there we jump directly into the Preservation Alliance's mission on a remote planet at the edge of the Corporation Rim, where we learn that after gaining free will, Murderbot just kept on working for humans. What else was it supposed to do? The show skips around a little bit to show how it ended up there as we get us acclimated to the Preservation Alliance team and their unorthodox methods. I cackled particularly loudly at one scene of the group dancing around a fire and playing goofy sounding instruments while Murderbot watches blankly from the nearby window.
While I haven't read all of The Murderbot Diaries, I did read the first novella, All Systems Red, before the season premiered. Every beat from the beginning of the book appears in these first two episodes, but there's also a lot that has been added, including many of the jokes about how out there Preservation Alliance is. Unlike many adaptations where I'd bemoan going off the beaten path, I actually think it makes for a much better show here. All Systems Red is a compact novella, and many of the show's decisions add a lot. There's space to expand on the source material, and for the most part, Murderbot expands on it well.
The one part I'm not sure about is some of the mild sexualizing of Skarsgård in the lead role. From a few nude shots — which admittedly serve the purpose of showing Murderbot has no human genitals — to comments about how the SecUnit has a "sweet face," it feels like the show knows it has a good-looking leading man and wants to make use of that fact. Which is fair; this is television, and Skarsgård has been a hearththrob ever since he appeared as an immortal vampire in HBO's True Blood. But that also feels somewhat at odds with the books, which to my knowledge don't really dig into this angle on Murderbot as a character. Maybe I just need to read deeper into the series, but for now, it is one of the few things about the series that feels a little awkward to me.
Fortunately, that's a very small blemish on an otherwise fantastic couple of opening episodes. I really like that these episodes feel like episodes of a television series, rather than the first part of a 10-hour movie. Streaming has leaned hard into the latter format over the past few years, but here we have a refreshing example of a TV show that is not afraid to be a TV show. The two-episode premiere doesn't feel like Apple dumping a bunch of content on viewers, but rather giving us a solid two-parter series premiere which sets up the main hook of the show: that something is seriously amiss on the planet the Preservation Alliance team is surveying. And at 30 and 26 minutes respectively, the episodes are a breeze to watch.
Some other plusses: this show has a bright color palette, good soundtrack (along with great opening credits), cool creature design, interesting visual effects and good sets and locations. It also gets inventive with its camera work. It's got traditional cinematic shots, security video feeds, and even a slightly different camera style for the in-world soap opera The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon.
Of course, I'd be remiss not to mention Sanctuary Moon, which is a whole separate production featuring the likes of John Cho, Clark Gregg, Dewanda Wise and Jack McBrayer. It's very funny and adds so much to the series. Blowing Sanctuary Moon up in this way might be one of the most inspired decisions the TV show makes.
After Murderbot saves Baradwaj (Tamara Podemski) and Arada (Tattiawna Jones) from a giant centipede creature, it tries to help Arada with her shock in the one way it can think of: putting down its helmet to reveal its human face and spouting off reassuring lines from Sanctuary Moon. Obviously that's not something a normal Murderbot would do, even if none of the scientists seem to know the source of these words. I guess they need to watch more TV.
The second episode splits into two distinct plotlines. In one branch, Doctor Mensah (Noma Dumezweni) and Baradwaj heads out on another mission to try and figure out what's wrong with the dead spots on the team's maps. Gurathin, the augemented human played adeptly by David Dastmalchian, convinces them to leave the SecUnit behind, which gives him a chance to interrogate it to try and figure out why it's seemingly malfunctioning. Pretty much all of this is invented for the show, but it works really well by giving us more time to develop the lowkey animosity between Gurathin and Murderbot, as well as reveal more about characters like Mensah, the group's leader who suffers from panic attacks.
Oh, and we can't forget Arada and her wife Pin-Lee (Sabrina Wu), who enter into a throuple situation with Ratthi (Akshay Khanna), complete with a contract to keep things from getting messy. The show leans hard into the humor of this situation, going so far as to have Murderbot pipe the video feed through to Gurathin when he tries to snoop around in Murderbot's systems. I don't love this plotline, but I do love how the show is utilizing it for maximum comedic effect.
Verdict
These two opening episodes are a great way to introduce viewers to the show with a ton of humor as well as some action, and they do a great job of getting a lot of information across in a clear, concise way thanks to Skarsgård's narration. By the end, we have a much better idea of who all the characters are and their specific dynamics, right before they make the call to the DeltFall survey team on the other side of the planet, which goes unanswered since that whole team (including their SecUnit) have been butchered. We're ending on a cliffhanger! Obviously, we'll just have to tune in next week.
Premiere grade: B+
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