“Murderbot, diary of an Assasynth” on Apple TV+: the conscience cases of a space Robocop

APPLE TV+ – ON DEMAND – SERIES

A distant descendant of Robocop, Murderbot (a contraction of "murder" and "robot") has given himself this terrifying name. An android designed to ensure the safety of humans in a galaxy dominated by large multi-planetary corporations (as they used to say multinationals), Murderbot (Alexander Skarsgard) has managed to disable the firewalls that prevented his artificial intelligence from exercising its free will, and initially plans to do so in a bloody way.

Adapted from a series of novels by Martha Wells, Journal of an Assasynth (2017-2023, published in France from 2019 by L'Atalante), Murderbot is a blend of philosophical speculations prompted by the potential and then actual existence of thinking machines and space opera. The whole thing is condensed into half-hour episodes – the format generally assigned to comedy – whose conception and production were entrusted to brothers Chris and Paul Weitz, versatile craftsmen, to whom we owe both the adolescent excesses of American Pie and the adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia.

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