Tech company Onira-Tech has developed the ultimate immersive virtual reality programme which allows people to literally live their dreams. The only issue is that now, some of their clients don’t want to leave. Enter ex-hostage negotiator Mara Kint, brought in to try and talk these people out of their dream and back into the real world. But can she overcome her own demons?

Fans of Red Dwarf will no doubt recognise this concept – Better Than Life, the episode and the novel, dealt with the scenario of a total immersion video game that was so good, players would not want to leave and would end up withering away in the real world. Where Dwarf played it for comedy though, Reverie aims for seriousness and looks to stretch the concept over an entire series.

You might expect with such a high concept (if not entirely original – let’s also remember Agents of SHIELD recently did similar with The Framework) idea, that there’s a lot of background technobabble to go through, but the writers wisely play it fairly fast and loose, as if sensing that there are a few too many holes in the central idea if you prod at it too closely. There is a bit of info-dumpy dialogue from Haysbert’s Charlie Ventana, as he lays out the background of central character Kint – why she’s so brilliant at what she does and so forth – but otherwise the dialogue is fairly snappy and unobtrusive.

The characters are all fairly cookie cutter for anyone who’s watched TV drama over the last decade or so – Kint is the damaged ex-negotiator with the brilliant mind who copes with the tragedy that caused her to quit by drinking and self-medicating heavily. Ventana is the ex-mentor/boss who thinks that she’s the only one who can help, Jessica Lu’s Alexis Barrett is the spiky Asian tech guru who isn’t good at dealing with people and has (yes – you could see it coming) a colourful streak of purple in her otherwise jet black hair so that we know she’s a bit kooky, and Sendhil Ramamurthy pretty much feels like his character from Heroes when it began – all wide-eyed earnestness and wanting to save the world with his work on the Reverie. None of these characters is breaking any sort of mould, and as the first twenty minutes or so of the show goes by and various boxes get ticked, you start to wonder if there is really even a pilot, let alone a show, in this idea.

However, what makes this – and I mean absolutely elevates it from being a boringly familiar set of tropes into a genuinely affecting show – is the central performance. There’s an odd echo (to me) of Sandra Bullock in Sarah Shahi, not just in her broadly similar appearance but also in her voice and mannerisms. She’s instantly likeable, and makes the character work beyond the boundaries of cliché with a committed performance that makes you feel the emotions she’s goes through. When we revisit her own personal tragedy in flashback, it’s so obvious as to be beyond cliché, but her performance really makes you buy into it. Later, as she solves the mystery holding her first ‘mission’ in his dream world, I felt genuine pricks of emotion as they compared personal tales of woe, and there was a sense of her really connecting to bring him home.

The rest of the cast does solid work – Haysbert is always a delight on screen, with a quiet intelligence and buttery smooth tones, and Ramamurthy basically plays his standard character with the usual charm. There’s a hint that Lu’s character has hidden depths, but as of the pilot, the script mainly requires her to be closed off to everyone, so it’s difficult to gauge her performance at this point.

All told, it’s a slick example of a well-worn idea with familiar characters that’s brought to life by its casting. I don’t expect this show to be lighting up awards season anytime soon, but on the strength of this opener, it’s a decent way to pass an hour a week.

Verdict: Trope-laden characters in a hackneyed plot are saved by the commitment and easy charm of the cast. I’m intrigued to see where this one goes. 7/10

Greg D. Smith