How Apple TV+'s Best New Sci-Fi Show Blends 3 Genres At Once
Is Murderbot a comedy? A drama, or something else?
If you only glanced at the title of Apple TV+’s new sci-fi series Murderbot, you might think you were dealing with some kind of true-crime procedural in space. And, while Murderbot Season 1 does have a pretty big mystery at the core of its narrative, and the whole thing does take place in space, the tremendous thing about the show is how many different genres it straddles at once.
In fact, speaking to the cast of Murderbot, you might think the show was actually a sitcom, rather than a full-blown Apple prestige drama. “ I think it was very clear that we were doing a comedy other than the fact that no laugh track,” actress Tamara Podemski tells Inverse. “Even if all my character does is cry all the time.”
Podemski plays Bharadwaj, a scientist who nearly perishes in the first episode, and is saved by the timely intervention of her planetary expedition’s SecUnit, AKA “Murderbot,” played by Alexander Skarsgård. In the reality of the show, Bharadwaj is just one member of the PreservationAux group, a quirky band of humans who mean well but aren’t exactly intrepid or badass space explorers. While a lot of the show’s humor comes from its titular narrator and its meta-fictional TV obsessions, the actual crew that SecUnit protects are the heart and soul of the show.
“I mean, there were scenes where it felt like we were rehearsing a comedy play,” Akshay Khanna, who plays Ratthi adds. “We'd sort of feed each other different stuff, and we just had an intensely playful atmosphere on set. I think that really shows when you watch it.”
Khanna has a point, and although his character, and pretty much every member of PreservationAux, are faced with mortal danger, there’s still a sense that this is a workplace comedy, in which the stakes are just slightly higher than normal. Murderbot doesn’t skew all the way into the arch comedy of something like Avenue 5, and that’s probably because these folks are all very likable, if a little helpless.
The Murderbot in action. If you only saw this still from the show, you might have a strange idea of what it was like.
“It kind of oscillates between the very hard funny and the very sci-fi action thriller elements,” Sabrina Wu, who plays Pin-Lee adds. “It's called Murderbot, but really we're watching this bot go through a 9 to 5 and what that feels like.”
For veteran sci-fi actor David Dastmalchian though, the only reason why the show is able to be a comedy, a space opera, and a thriller all at once isn’t because the jokes are funny, or because the sci-fi is cool, or even because the mystery is complex. Instead, he’s adamant that one other element keeps all of Murderbot together.
“It’s the relationships. The character’s relationships to one another,” he tells Inverse. In the series, Dastmalchian plays Gurathin, an augmented human, who has a testy relationship with SecUnit. And, if you’re wondering if an augmented human is anything like Dastmalchian’s twisted Mentat character, Piter De Vries, from Dune: Part 1 (2021), the best way to think about Gurathin is that he’s someone who is reformed. He used to be kind of evil and untrusting, but now, through his love of Dr. Mensah (Noma Dumezweni) he’s a force for good, albeit a cranky one.
Noma Dumezweni is funny in Murderbot. But she’s not playing for laughs on purpose.
“I've gotten to work on some really cool genre pieces in science fiction, superhero, and horror. And my approach is the same, and it reflects my history and Noma’s [Dumezweni] history in the theater,” Dastmalchian says. “On the stage as an actor, you look to the text, you look to the relationship to the other characters in your scenes, and you look to your intention. With this we were given a beautiful roadmap thanks to [author] Martha Wells with the world of Murderbot.”
“I think they honored her book beautifully,” Dumezweni says in reference to the beloved source material. “As for me, I followed the breadcrumbs from [showrunners] Paul and Chris Weitz. I love the tone of the comedy, but we played as if we’re actually living in it. This is the lives of these people in the future at this moment.”
