The Medium is Not Enough

In the US: Thursdays, Hulu
In the UK: Acquired by BBC

Most TV dramas are written by people without much knowledge of science and technology. The resulting mistakes annoy people who do have knowledge of science and technology. But as Mr Robot demonstrated, there is a market for TV dramas written by people who do understand science and technology. And as the title suggests, Devs is such a show – Devs is short for developers, as any IT fool knows.

However, Devs also demonstrates that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, both for audiences and for writers. Even the title is a trap for those who know about technology. Does Devs actually stand for developers or is that what the show wants you to think? Because one of the many mysteries that Devs builds up in its first two episodes is the mystery of what devs actually stands for – even the show’s collection of emotionless IT staff aren’t sure.

From the brain of Alex Garland

What Devs definitely is is the first TV show both written and directed by Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Sunshine, 28 Days Later), meaning it’s very ‘hard SF’. It’s also one of the first “FX on Hulu” shows released so far, meaning it’s a bit more niche and a bit darker than the standard Hulu fare.

It sees Sonoya Mizuno and Karl Glusman playing a happy couple of super-brained developers working for bearded Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation) and his ultra high-tech San Francisco tech company. They’re the kind of people who argue over breakfast about the right mathematical functions to use for encryption protocols to avoid being vulnerable to cracking by quantum computers – which given that they live and work in a near future when quantum computers are both viable and useful isn’t quite as theoretical a worry as it might at first seem.

When AI researcher Glusman demonstrates to Offerman a neural model of a nematode that accurately predicts its behaviour for 10 seconds, he’s rapidly promoted to Offerman’s Devs division – a division so secret no one actually knows what it does and so advanced that it works in an area inside a Faraday cage that’s vacuum sealed away from the rest of the universe.

But that same day, Glusman disappears and Mizuno is tenacious enough to start investigating what’s happened to him, even after she’s seen CCTV footage of him setting fire to himself and burning to death. Soon she finds a mysterious app on his phone that really isn’t the Sudoku game it claims to be…

What is Devs? What happened to Sergei? What is the app really? What is Offerman planning to do? Why does he have a giant statue of his dead daughter looming over his house?

And does knowing too much about physics turn a rather good show that knows quite a bit about physics into something more annoying?

Continue reading “Review: Devs 1×1-1×2 (US: Hulu; UK: BBC Two)”