MURDERBOT Review: You Get What You Pay For

I'm not bad. I'm just made that way.

Murderbot
The 10-episode series will premiere globally on Apple TV+ with the first two episodes on Friday, May 16, followed by new episodes every Friday through July 11. I've seen all 10 episodes.

Having loosed itself from an oppressive control device, a rogue Security Unit (Alexander Skarsgård) celebrates. First, it considers its environment. Surrounded by nincompoops and dolts, some of whom clearly deserve to die, the SecUnit names itself Murderbot.

Ha ha!

The very first sequence, narrated by Skarsgård, wryly identifies the series as a very dry comedy. Created and written by Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz, who first made a name for themselves with the bawdy yet sweet American Pie before moving on to a variety of (mostly) light and clever entertainment over the past quarter century, the series is based on All Systems Red, published in 2017, the first in a series of novels by Martha Wells.

Assigned to protect the PreservationAux team, roughly analogous to 60s hippies, as they survey a new planet they plan to harvest, Murderbot keeps up a continuous narrative stream, expressing his disdain for the pitfully emotional creatures. Led by Mensah (Noma Dumezweni), who displays a propensity for panic attacks, the team (Sabrina Wu, Tattiawna Jones, Akshay Khanna, Tamara Pomemski) is a motley collection of likable, kind-hearted souls, who are glad to welcome the cyborg onto their team, with only Gurathin (David Dastmalchian) eyeing it with suspicion.

The second episode revolves around Gurathin's interrogation of Murderbot in their ship while the rest of the team is on the planet below, and by the end of the episode the mystery of Murderbot's past and the strong possibility that it will pose a huge threat to them is firmly established.

Let's be honest: any being that calls itself "Murderbot" is likely to pose significant danger, but it hasn't spoken that name out loud to anyone else, yet. Even though the series traffics in the obvious, with the cyborg constantly narrating what's on screen and anticipating how others will react to its actions, the relaxed pace and the breezy interplay between the human characters combine to make the entire series a pleasant delight.

With each episode running 30 minutes or less, and scheduled to debut on a weekly basis, it's easy to recommend the show as light entertainment, enlivened by Alexander Skarsgård's steady presence, the contrasting dead-eye balance provided by David Dastmalchian, and the entire cast's droll delivery of consistently amusing dialogue.

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