Apple TV+ is probably my top personal pick of the best streaming services out there – I love that it has a smaller, tighter and more reliably high-quality catalogue of shows and movies compared to the likes of Netflix and Prime Video. It's also increasingly the default home of ambitious sci-fi, too, a genre I adore.
It's reiterating that commitment to mind-bending titles with its latest upcoming show, which has finally been given a couple of teaser images (above this story and down below), years after being announced back in 2023. Don't be put off by the name, either – Murderbot should be a really interesting and philosophical new show.
It'll be based on a series of short novellas written by masterful and multi-award-winning author Martha Wells, collectively known as the Murderbot Diaries. Each stars the titular humanoid security robot, who will be played by Alexander Skarsgård in predictably soulful fashion.
To be clear, that name (both of the character and the show) is a deliberate semi-misdirect. Murderbot is a self-given name by this sentient robot, after it's managed to get around the limitations on its personality and self-determination. Coming to the realisation that its entire designed purpose is to kill people, it recoils in horror from that status and effectively becomes a rogue agent.
Each of the Murderbot novellas showcases a relatively short episode in which said robot and a small rotating assembly of human space crew, research scientists and more try to escape from a generally life-threatening situation. That should mean the show has plenty of action scenes to chew through.
More memorable, though, is the philosophy of it all. The robot's journey from self-disgust to acceptance, and the way it processes the trauma of what it knows it's done in the past, is a key dynamic. Equally important is the way that humans around it view it – when it has its extremely convincing human-like face exposed, but also when it sheathes itself in the helmet that you can see above, and more obviously becomes robotic in their eyes.
Pretty soon you're in Asimov territory, considering what makes something human and/or alive, and I'm really hopeful that Apple TV+ can thread the needle and retain that sophistication, based on its other excellent and cerebral sci-fi shows. I'll find out at the same time as you, though, when the show starts streaming on 16 May this year.
