Philip K Dick's
ELECTRIC DREAMS
2017
Amazon Prime

REAL LIFE

Sarah is a police officer in a technologically advanced society, who is caught in legacy of guilt after surviving a significantly bad event. To get away from her memories, she takes a VR 'holiday' and finds herself inhabiting the body of George, the CEO of a company currently developing VR vacation headsets and a man mourning his murdered wife. It becomes increasingly unclear which of the two worlds these people are inhabiting is, in fact, the real one. The act of choosing one or the other will, however, mean the death of the person's mind in the other, so working out which is real becomes of paramount importance.

Since the release of Ridley Scott's classic BLADE RUNNER, based on the novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, Philip K Dick's stock as a writer for screen adaptation has been on the rise. This series aims to take some of the writer's short stories and adapt them into an anthology series. Real Life, the first in the Amazon running order, though not the Channel 4 transmission order, is a perfect example of the writer's obsession with identity, memory and alternative reality. The ideas of the holiday taking place only in your head and virtual idenities overwriting the real one are straight out of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Total Recall. Here, though, there is a lot less action and a lot more talking. A lot more talking. As adapted by Ronald D Moore, the dialogue seems to be endless discussions about what the headsets are doing to the two characters' brains, what the results of continued use will be and how important it is to realise that their current reality is actual reality, all the time refusing to give away which of the two is, in fact, the real one (before the very last scene, at least).

The production has certainly thrown some money at the episode, with a strong cast to go along with the strong concept. There isn't a weak performance in the pack. The two futures are impressively realised with some opulent sets and some expansive special effects, especially true of the cop's world with its flying cars (hello again, BLADE RUNNER) and giant neon billboards. This is all background detail, but it makes things much more covincing

As a series starter (on the Amazon Prime running order, at least. It was one of only six shown on the Channel 4 run in the UK.) Real life is an impressive opening salvo and sets a high standard. It remains to be seen whether the other stories will be able to maintain this quality.

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AUTOFAC

Twenty years after a nuclear war ends society, the remnants of humanity face a new peril in the shape of the Autofac, an automated plant using up their resources and poisoning their air and water as it produces goods for consumers who are no longer there. Hacker Emily and Autofac customer service drone Alice begin a battle of human against AI wills.

This episode is, above all, a two hander between human and android adversaries. Yes, there is an unsubtle commentary on current human consumerism, but the story is really about the human hacker against the android service droid. The outstanding performance is by Janelle Monae as the latter. She has to play a smart and capable adversary who is nearly, but not quite, human and she pitches it beautifully.

The intellectual duel has a few twists and turns along the way that nicely wrongfoot the audience. There is a single question with the setup that threatens to undermine acceptance of the scenario, but that is addressed later on. The lack of a built-in programming failsafe is also a major oversight and one that does not get addressed.

Those caveats aside, this is a smart and engaging episode.

Autofac was not shown in the Channel 4 run of episodes.

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HUMAN IS

Vera Herrick is locked in a loveless marriage with Silas, a cold and abusive husband. When a disastrous military attack on an alien world sends him back to her as a changed man, the question becomes whether he is operating under alien influence and, if he is, whether that is an altogether bad thing.

Terra in 2520 is a dying Earth, forced to strip mine resources from alien worlds in order to keep its population alive. The inhabitants of Rexor 4 are not willing to allow this to happen to their homeworld without a fight. None of which is actually focused on in this story. Instead, what we have is the examination of a vital, sexual woman trapped in an emotional, sexless existence. Is it any surprise, then, that she is not entirely bothered by the possibility that her husband is now an alien infiltrator?

This episode is defined more by what it lacks than what is possesses. Yes, there is a hugely impressive performance from Essie Davis at its core. So powerful is she that the whole episode revolves around her and overlong sequences of her visiting a sex den, taking a bath and disrobing in her bedroom are forgiveable. Even the formidable Bryan Cranston is simply a satellite in her orbit. Sadly, though, the powerful depiction of a complicated woman isn't enough to make up for the episode's deficiencies. The nature of the returned Silas is unmasked quickly and the trial sequence fails to convince or resolve matters.

The main problem is that this isn't a story, it's a vignette. Larger issues like the fate of two planets, alien intentions, the struggle between political and military solutions are all introduced with enough strength to be considered important and then are jettisoned in favour of the central love story. There is no resolution, except whether the lovers will be together, and that simply isn't enough.

Human Is was shown as part of the Channel 4 run of episodes.

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CRAZY DIAMOND

Ed Morris works growing the quantum consciousness that powers the personalities and emotions of artificial humans known as Jacks and Jills. He also dreams of sailing away from his problems, so when he is approached by a failing Jill who has a plan to steal enough quantum consciousnesses from his company to make them both rich, he is beguiled into a dark underworld of crime and betrayal.

Crazy Diamond is a cut-price DOUBLE INDEMNITY set in a future world of collapsing coasts, decaying vegetables and intelligent servants developed from pigs. It has all the film noir staples; a sap, a femme fatale and twists and turns and betrayals galore. Unfortunately, the plot is no DOUBLE INDEMNITY, not matter how much the script namechecks the famous film. There is one decent double-cross that the audience won't see coming, but there are too many things about the rest of the plot that don't make sense, including the ease of the initial heist (explained away later), two amateurs taking down a gun-toting gang of (completely uncovincing) villains and whole subplots involving conversations with half-pig guards, cliff collapses and instantly decaying vegetables.

The episode relies on the star wattage of Steve Buscemi in the role of Ed Morris, but he's given too little to work with. We've seen this kind of sad sack character before and done much better, not least by Buscemi himself. Whilst he's always good value, there are too many other misfiring cylinders to make this anything more than passable.

Crazy Diamond was shown as part of the Channel 4 run of episodes.

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THE HOOD MAKER

In a decaying, authoritarian future, telepaths are feared, ghettoised, used and abused. They have now been co-opted to work with the police and to read people's minds without consent. The first police Teep, Honor, is partnered with Agent Ross and together they search for the Hood Maker, a man who has found a way to block telepaths using homemade hoods. As the city teeters on the brink of a normal/telepath civil war, these two may the last hope for understanding and peace.

The Hood Maker is a handsomely-mounted and moodily shot future noir. It harnesses the star power of GAME OF THRONES almunus James Madden and the vulnerability of co-star Holliday Grainger. Theirs is a relationship that is allowed to breathe and grow throughout the episode, whilst also allowing for the potential of surprises, twists and betrayals along the way. It also allows the two stars to give excellent performances and set up a nice two-hander relationship play before the last third becomes a bit of info-dump string of twists in the tale.

The details of the decaying world are well-observed and cinematography is gorgeous, all dusty sepia tones and dark shadows. The retro future with 40s clothes and hard copy files instead of computers and LCD readouts is impeccably mounted. The plot is tight and controlled, though the lack of a conclusive outcome is somewhat frustraing.

The Hood Maker was shown as part of the Channel 4 run of episodes.

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SAFE AND SOUND

Foster Lee is brought from the free lands in the American West into the heavily regulated and surveilled urban region of the east, which complains of terrorist attacks to justify its security measures. Foster is a high school girl who wants to fit in and wants to have her own Dex, a virtual assistant, but also tracker. When she can't work it properly, she is befriended by customer support assistant Ethan, who realises that something very wrong is going on at Foster's school and asks for her help to avoid another terrorist atrocity.

The current existential battle between freedom and security, privacy and safety, is unsubtly skewered in this story. The main problem is that the grooming of the high school girl into acts of quite ridiculous stupidity are so obvious that it is impossible for the audience to empathise with the main character for not seeing through it instantly. As a result, the whole story is completely unbelievable.

Which is a shame, because this is one of the most important public debates of our times and needs examination. It just needs something a little sharper and cleverer than this. As usual, the city environment is well-rendered, with the high school backdrdop allowing the usual mores of teenage angst to be mixed in with the more cerebral stuff. That Foster is an outsider and wants to fit in, that the popular girls shun her to protect themselves and that the boys use this vulnerability to try and gain sexual favours are all tried and tested tropes and do lend credence to Foster's confusion and emotional upset, but not enough to excuse a state-sponsored action so blatant that she should have seen through it even if her mother wasn't warning against such things all the time. The nature of the so-called twist is so obvious right from the start that the coda explaining it is completely superfluous.

Safe and Sound was shown as part of the Channel 4 run of episodes.

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THE FATHER THING

Charlie loves nobody more than his father. Then he sees an alien replace him in the garage. His friends don't believe him, but there are others who are reporting online that those close to them are not who they used to be. Can Charlie convince anyone of what is going on before an alien invasion takes a foothold on Earth?.

Part INVADERS FROM MARS and part Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, this is a sadly unoriginal retelling of those stories. A parent is replaced, nobody believes the child as the adults are taken over. The show at least doesn't make any effort to hide its origins. The pods in the forest may look like amniotic sacs, but they are in every other way the pods from INVASION OF THE BODYSNATCHERS. Having the father played by Greg Kinnear doesn't manage to freshen anything up or add any weight to it. The first real disappointment of the series.

The Father Thing was not shown as part of the Channel 4 run of episodes.

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IMPOSSIBLE PLANET

Two shady interstellar tour guides are given a commission to take an elderly lady to see Earth, which she was told stories of by her grandmother. Since Earth is no longer in existence, they choose another planet, assuming they can con the woman out of the money. Her android companion, however, becomes aware of the plan. The old woman, however, starts to cast a spell over the younger of the guides and perhaps she knows more about what he wants than he knows himself.

Is a dream ever more important than reality? Is a dream worth dying to recapture? A couple of questions raised by this episode, but in a story that is overlong and underfilled. It is nice to Geraldine Chaplain given a strong role for an older woman, but her conversations with Norton on the ship become a little repetitive. When she reveals he looks exactly like her grandfather and wants him to wear her grandfather's clothes whilst she is dressed as her grandmother, things get a little too incestuous. It's also impossible to understand why a man in the prime of his life, who has just come to realisation of what he wants out of life, or more pertinently what he doesn't want, would then throw it away to take her onto the surface of a dead planet. The vision their dying minds share could never have been a guarantee, so it makes absolutely no sense on any intellectual or emotional level.

Other plot strands, such as Norton's relationship with his girlfriend and the android companion's role in all of this are woefully underserved.

By the end, it's hard to see what the point of the episode was, or even if there was one at all. It may have made sense in the short story, but it has certainly been lost in the translation to the screen.

Impossible Planet was shown as part of the Channel 4 run of episodes.

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THE COMMUTER

Ed Jacobsen is living his worst life. He has a low-level job at Woking train station, he lives on a rubbish-strewn estate, his marriage is under immense strain and his son has a mental illness that manifests as violent outbursts, involving the police and social services. As a result, when a customer asks for a ticket to Macon Heights, a station that doesn't exist, he is confused. When she disappears on him twice, he is confused further. When he takes the train and finds people leaving the train to walk to a nonexistant town, he follows them. When he returns home, he finds his life immeasurably changed.

Be careful what you wish for. Life is often less than you would like, but it can always be worse. Living in reality, whilst hard, is always better than submerging yourself in a dream. These are the points The Commuter wishes to make and it takes its own sweet time to make them. Admittedly, the languid pace allows for an atmospheric set up of Ed and his life, but when you have Timothy Spall, an actor whose face fairly screams downtrodden by the world, most of the work is already done for you. The surreal nature of the town, shrouded in its mists, but apparently perfect and happy in its interior, is also enough, but we are given some daliesque glimpses into another world where everything is white and normal dimensions don't apply. That's a bit of overkill that just wasn't needed.

The backdrop is an immaculately observed, though somewhat unflattering, view of a British life of quiet desperation. There is, perhaps, one too many montage of Spall looking out of a train window at the world passing by, and one too many sinister passengers, but it's a tour de force of subtle acting by Spall and with that going on, the rest is immaterial.

The Commuter was shown as part of the Channel 4 run of episodes.

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KILL ALL OTHERS

Phil is an ordinary man with an ordinary job, but his father was a union man who taught him to see only what was there, not what others said was there. When the soon to be President announces on TV that the populace should 'kill all others', he can't understand why nobody else seems concerned. As billboards go up with the slogan and finally a few people start talking about it, he becomes increasingly concerned. When a woman is chased by a mob, he steps in to defend her until the police arrive. He challenges the candidate on a national tv phone in and, before he knows it, he is being labelled as an 'other'.

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone with a brain that politicians use minorities or imagined enemies to stir up fear and keep the populace in line. The fear of refugees and migrants being stoked around the world at the moment is only too obvious as proof of that. The McCarthy communist witchunts are another. The anti-Jewish hatred stirred up by the nazis in another. They create a bogeyman and then promise protection from that bogeyman. Sadly, populations seem to be unable to see through this trick as it is used time and time again.

This episode obviously takes the process to the extreme by simply labelling the created enemy as 'others' which then allows anyone to be targeted. It's not necessarily the most subtle point, but it is a point well worth making. The sub-themes about ubiquitous advertising, the justice system as a tool of political power and global surveillance are all equally unsubtly referenced. Nothing here is in any way groundbreaking, but it is a story told reasonably well and it does end on a (pun not intended) killer moment.

Kill All Others was not shown as part of the Channel 4 run of episodes.

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