Don’t let The Jetsons’ Rosie fool you: robot butlers and other techno-servants rarely work out well in futuristic tales. It’s a lesson that apparently has to be learned yet again in a new sci-fi drama called Humans, which has just cast William Hurt, Katherine Parkinson, Tom Goodman-Hill, Colin Morgan, Rebecca Front, Neil Maskell and Gemma Chan.
Writers Sam Vincent and Jonathan Brackley have adapted the story from Swedish drama Real Humans, and it’ll be a co-production of the US AMC channel and Channel 4.
Humans is set in a parallel world where instead of obsessing over smartphones, the must-have gadget is a Synth, sophisticated robot servants that are eerily similar to flesh and blood people. Parkinson plays Laura, a lawyer who is struggling with some life issues. Her husband Joe (Goodman-Hill) buys a second-hand Synth (Chan), who seems to be the perfect answer to their domestic problems… Until she begins to act more human than machine.
Hurt is set as George Millican, a widower who has his own out-of-date Synth that he views more as a son than a gadget (shades of his turn in A.I: Artificial Intelligence there), while Morgan will be Leo, a man searching for someone from his past. Front plays overbearing Synth Vera, while Maskell is Peter Drummond, part of the Special Technologies Task Force, which policies the Synths.
With filming already under way, Humans will hit screens here and across the pond next year.