After three episodes, I posted that The Murderbot TV show is a disappointing 6/10.  The rest of the season has redeemed the show.  Murderbot had a slow start, but turned into a great show.

One complaint was that the rest of the cast lack charisma or appeal.  They don’t get more attractive, but the characters do develop plausible personalities that have strengths and weaknesses.  They all make mistakes, but are redeemable.

Murderbot is working as a security robot for a group of hippies who are doing a survey of an uninhabited planet.  The group’s idealistic beliefs and lifestyle are tedious in the first few episodes.  In later episodes, being idealistic, rather than pragmatic, gets the group in trouble because real-life doesn’t play by their rules.  By the final episode, their idealism saves Murderbot.  It’s a nice arc.

My other complaint was that Alex Skarsgård looks like a human, so seems more like an autistic person, than a robot.  Skarsgård does a great job of acting like a robot, rather than an autistic guy.  He has a great deadpan delivery which would have been lost if we didn’t see his face. 

Humanoid robots in movies and TV can go from human replicants like in Blade Runner to robotic golems like Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still. 

Skarsgård is on the left side of this spectrum.  He acts autistic, but can move smoothly.  He wears skin trunks to conceal his naughty bits, but no other makeup or prosthetics to differentiate him from a human.  A couple of times in the series, a character asks if he can function as a sex-bot.  A sec-bot would have some builtin armor and weapons, so his character would benefit from something that makes him fit for combat.

That’s my only complaint.  Murderbot has action, some humor, plausible characters and a small amount of personal drama.  It rates at least an 8.

This Youtube video summarizes Murderbot with spoilers.