Mr Robot

For a long time, this show was just an image that appeared in all of Amazon Prime’s advertising.  Every time I saw it, I thought about how strange it was that someone would have the surname Robot, let alone that we would be asked to refer to them with such a formal title.  It didn’t say anything about the programme, its story or contents, and was therefore weirdly unappealing.

This all changed one weekday evening when my housemate, who is normally happiest watching Friends reruns (as am I, sometimes), declared he had heard from a friend that this was a great show and could we watch it.  Given that the TV (and the whole flat and, in fact, everything in it) belongs to him, I was happy to agree.  As a sofa sloth and binge viewer, anything I can do to feel less guilty about sprawling across the living room devouring show after show is a welcome move.

Episode one, series one of Mr Robot is one of the best opening episodes I have ever seen.  On this note I would liken it to Glee (based on setting up a premise with amazing neatness in a pilot), but the similarities end there.  We were both sucked into a filthy, pulsating Manhattan, impressed by our initiation into computer hacking tricks, gripped by the filthy characters and hooked on Elliot.  Our lead character is like nobody else in TV.  Vulnerable and powerful, and incredibly complex, half of your viewing energy with this show will be taken up by simply trying to figure this lad out.

Played by Rami Malek, Elliot is 50% brooding with his hood pulled down and 50% brooding with his hood pulled up.  If you can move on from the fact this constant black hoodie on an adult screams suburban fan of emo music, there’s a lot to enjoy about Elliot.  It’s also worth noting that Malek’s unique look means that the majority of the screen is filled with wonderfully enormous eyeballs at any given moment.

From an amazing opening episode, series one winds itself up with increasing and ceaseless tension.  By the very day after our discovery of Mr Robot, my housemate had watched all nine episodes.  And while it took me weeks to get through the second series, thanks to not really understanding the growing complication of its plot (the fault of my own limited brain), he was done with that by the next day.

Don’t be put off by the reams of computer-related content.  While there are only so many shots of download progress bars a drama can sustain, Mr Robot is more than that.  It provides brutal commentary on our modern society, presented through the breath-taking characterisation of its leads.  Darlene is great, but the most stock of the main characters.  Portia Doubleday as Angela commands her scenes with goosebump-inducing subtlety, while Martin Hallström’s Tyrell Wellick is never predictable.  For the life of me, I can’t enjoy any of Christian Slater’s scenes – his shouting and gurning just seems at odds with a more sophisticated tone struck by the rest of the show.

Series three is due on October 11^th and maybe this will trigger the end of Amazon banging on about American Gods with autoplay clips in everyone’s Facebook feed.  Mr Robot will be back across their ubiquitous marketing, but this time I will know what it is and that I am going to watch it.