Brave New World Season 1 (Sky/Now) TV Show Review

"You just need to embrace this place and let it be wonderful."

by Casimir Harlow
Movies & TV Shows Review

36

Brave New World Season 1 (Sky/Now) TV Show Review

Aldous Huxley's classic 1932 novel, Brave New World, gets a lavish update for the post-internet generation, but it's not particularly brave nor all that new.

Originally planned for SyFy, then shifted to USA Network before finally landing on Peacock as one of their first drama releases, Brave New World certainly doesn't leave things boding well for Peacock's upcoming - and unnecessary - reboot of Battlestar Galactica. It's lavish, no doubt, exploring a visionary environment, a veritable utopia, but narratively it struggles to do much more than plod, failing to capitalise on its futurescape communist utopia with any kind of real critique. 

There are some superb ideas, and it is an imaginative take on an imaginative tale, but Brave New World appears more concerned in capturing the attention of Westworld fans than making its own mark and, unfortunately, ultimately comes across a little like Westworld-lite.

 

Westworld-lite

In the future, utopia has been achieved, although it has rules - no monogamy, no family and no privacy being the primary costs, however the hapless inhabitants are blissfully unaware of what they are really missing, as they have also been robbed of history, beyond the opportunity to travel on tours of the fabled 'Savage Lands', a theme-park like environment where the uncivilised act out such heinous acts as 'getting married'.

Lenina is a beautiful gene technician tasked with deciding which class to put each newly created individual in the world, and thus determining their fate. She finds herself capturing the attention of counsellor Bernard Marx, and the two of them make a trip to the Savage Lands, where they encounter a man called John, who will change their lives forever.

Brave New World

You have to understand that Brave New World secures a lot of goodwill in its opening pitch, coming across within the first episode alone as having the potential to be really very special indeed. The stage is set for a corrupt futurescape, where the prized Lenina starts to question her pill-popping programming, where her insecure supervisor Bernard starts to wonder whether something is awry after he finds evidence of a murder which, he's told, simply isn't possible in this perfect world, and where the 'savage' John might bring the whole curtain down and uncover the rotten core beneath.

The reality is, though, that Brave New World abandons its lofty ideals almost as quickly as it introduces them, eliciting some brief early tension from an excellent 'Savage Lands' setpiece, before leaving the much more electric environment behind for the entire rest of the season in favour of the daily orgies of the utopia. It gets tedious, and surprisingly small-scale very quickly, concerned with melodrama more than genuine drama, losing any real sense of momentum, and building to a conclusion only by necessity rather than any organic crescendo. 

 

Often coming across as more convincing an argument for this wierd-ass utopia than against  

Casting similarly initially seems on point - Downton Abbey's Jessica Brown Findley is undeniably stunning in her role as a widely coveted 'perfect specimin', Game of Thrones' Harry Lloyd suitably stiff as Bernard, and Alden Ehrenreich manages to leave Solo behind as the 'savage' John - but it's not long before they're given nowhere to go, and all three just become irritating as all hell. Ant-Man and the Wasp's own Ghost, Hannah John-Kamen, enjoys the decadence, Little Birds' Nina Sosanya is formulaically earnest, and Demi Moore's welcome, but unfortunately limited cameo lasts about as long as the good ideas in this show.

We don't care about any of them, or their petty slights and inconsequential plight. Will Lenina go to another orgy - will we have to sit through another orgy - will John be the most popular addition to the idyll, will Bernard grow a pair. Who cares? Brave New World certainly doesn't make it easy for us to get on board with this crowd, muting the emotions of the utopian populace with happy pills, and forgetting that, as a result, it largely numbs any eccentricities and intrigue audiences might have had in this bunch of obliviously narcissistic idiots. And Ehrenreich doesn't take long to become his own worst enemy, enjoying his own smugness just that bit too much.

It's not an unpleasant watch, with a wonderful visual landscape, and some intriguing ideas, a pretty cast and just enough substance to make for a perfectly entertaining binge-watch. The trouble is mainly that it could have been so much more. The constant pill-popping is quite a scary form of rampant population control, as is the class-setting at inception, while the idea of outlawed monogamy is - early on - revealed as not as blissful as some might assume. Zero privacy (everybody has a visual implant that records everything) is an idea which has been used to eye-opening effect in darker dramas like Black Mirror, but Brave New World is so very wrapped up in exploring its visual wonders that it forgets to actually spend adequate time exploring the dark core within, often coming across as more convincing an argument for this wierd-ass utopia than against. Westworld this is not, and Peacock are going to need to up their game, otherwise we are looking at a glossy but seriously neutered Battlestar Galactica revival.

Scores

Verdict

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5

5
AVForumsSCORE
OUT OF
10

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