Murderbot (Alexander Skarsgard), is a private security cyborg so bored at their job that they’ve hacked their governance module. Murderbot is a free sentient, able to do anything they want. Like worry about what will happen when someone finds out they’re a free sentient…

Troublesome, obsolete and thankful to be left alone, Murderbot is rented to a survey team led by Mensah (Noma Dumezweni). They’re from a more liberal world than the Corporate States that made Murderbot. They’re light, happy, individualists with neuroses and problems. Murderbot hates them all instantly. But Murderbot is the only thing keeping them alive and they’re about to realise this job is very, very much harder than they first thought.

Based on Martha Wells’ smash hit ongoing series of novellas and novels, Murderbot fits on Apple TV like an unusually well machined glove. It’s pacy, funny without being yackety sax about it and its tiny episodes allow for a laser like focus on its characters.

Dumezweni’s Mensah is one of the most immediately likable protagonists I’ve met in a long time. Principled, determined, permanently terrified and doing it anyway. Her team include genre stalwart David Dastmalchian as augmented human and tech expert Gurathin, Sabrina Lee as Pine-Lee, scientist and legal counsel and Tattiawna Jones as Arada, a biologist. Rounding them out are Tamara Podemski as geochemist Bharadwaj and Akshay Khanna as Ratthi, wormhole specialist and puppy in human form. They’re messy, complex, well-meaning and very fragile.

That’s where Murderbot comes in. Skarsgard is a performer who genuinely does not know how to do bad work and he nails the tone here perfectly. Murderbot could easily have been a Marvin the Paranoid Android style performative figure. Instead, they’ve got anxiety, depression, a little light disassociation. The humour in the show, and it’s very funny, is never ‘Laugh at the person with the mental illness’. Instead, it’s born in the gloriously untidy humans and Murderbot’s visceral reactions to them. There’s a constant poignancy, especially in this first episode and the first time Murderbot takes their helmet down, that refines everything too. Murderbot is terrified, and furious, and bored, and on edge all at once. They hate their job, they’re pretty sure they may have committed murder in the recent past and they want nothing more than to be left alone to watch their shows. But here they are. Their light is broken but they still work, and if there’s a more relatable protagonist for 2025 I haven’t met them yet.

This first episode packs in an introduction to the world, the cast and a stop off at show-in-a-show The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon with a flotilla of genre stalwarts playing Not Star Trek figures at all.

Verdict: It’s witty, funny, sharp, action packed and kind. I promise, Murderbot will be the only one having a bad time. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart