Murderbot (Apple TV)

[Lucas Ayde]

Anyone watching? Have only viewed the first episode so far - kind of underwhelming though not totally terrible. Will give the second a go this evening as Apple are generally pretty good at sci-fi.

Apparently based on a well-received book (I'd never heard of it before this).

[LivLL]

Book was superb but I don’t know how they’d translate it well into a film.

Will give it a watch later.

[quigonjay]

Good first couple of episodes, will continue watching

[swanny71]

Very watchable first episode but they were never going to do the brilliant books justice.
Murderbot is nowhere near cynical, world weary or sarcastic enough. Hoping for more in the rest of the series.

[Corso Marche]

Watched episode 1 on Friday, and episode 2 the next evening.

I'm done at that. The potential was there, but it under delivers.
Underwhelming, as someone mentioned above.

[LivLL]

Book was superb but I don’t know how they’d translate it well into a film.

Will give it a watch later.

[RizzoTheRat]

I watched the first 2 episodes last night. Decent but could have been done better IMO. Murderbot seems a bit too human in the beginning, Gurathin seemed more mechanical than Murderbot did in the second episode. Mensah seems to have been dumbed down a lot too, she was the sensible one in the books, but this has her rushing off on her own and nearly getting killed again.
It's certainly got potential though and these kinds of grumbles are always an issue when you've read the book and doesn't conform to the way you saw it in your minds eye.

I started rereading the books the other week, I'd forgotten how short most of them are.

[hondajack85]

One extreme to the other. Unlike something like Andor with its insufferably long and uninteresting scenes full of tts,this one is too short to really enjoy,even though the characters seem interesting.

[RizzoTheRat]

Agreed, we watched episodes 4 and 5 last night, ignoring the intro sequence and the credits they're less than 20 minutes per episode! I'm starting to think I should have waited until the whole series was out and watch it all in one go.

Seems to be deviating from the book a bit more, the Deltfall survivor wasn't in the book.

Hopefully it's proving popular enough they'll consider a slightly longer format if they do Artificial Condition for the next series.

[Lucas Ayde]

hondajack85 said:

One extreme to the other. Unlike something like Andor with its insufferably long and uninteresting scenes full of tts,this one is too short to really enjoy,even though the characters seem interesting.

I have to say that the shortness of each episode is a saving grace and probably why I'm still ploughing through it. There is some very interesting potential there but it all seems to fall so flat in the execution.

One of the big problems is that the supporting characters (the humans) are so un-engaging and frankly, downright annoying. The leader lady is somewhat relatable but for the rest of them, I'm hoping to see them bumped off.

Also, the sarcastic comments by 'Murderbot' are potentially good but when delivered as a flat, internal monologue they don't really hit like they should. He needs another character to bounce off.


With luck, they'll renew and fix the problems in a second season.