So Friday night of New York Comic Con, fans were treated to three screenings of new Fox shows. I won’t deny that I only stayed for one–and that was Almost Human, the new vehicle produced by J.J Abrams and J.H. Wyman (Fringe), and starring Karl Urban (of Star Trek, LOTR, and a hilarious stint on Hercules, fame). With the cast being rounded out by Michael Ealy (Common Law, Californication), and Lili Taylor (The Conjuring, High Fidelity, Say Anything), we can say safely say that there is some confidence in the acting that will be presented.
I went into this show with high expectations, and judging from the first episode, I won’t be disappointed. Set in the distant future, where all police officers have android partners, John Kennex (Urban) is struggling to deal with a traumatic incident in his past, where a drug bust went bad, leaving him in a compromised position, and fighting hard to make sense of the true story behind the mysterious terrorists that were involved in the attack. He has a deep seated grudge against ‘synthetics’ as he calls them, and ends up with Dorian (Ealy) as a partner. Dorian, a DMR android, is different than the current androids used within the force–he has emotions, can draw conclusions–which leaves him and Kennex bumping heads more than once within the first hour.
But still, they prove to be a dynamic force–and find that they both very much need each other. Both Ealy and Urban play incredibly well off one another, and the supporting cast is also very well acted. Despite being in the future, in something that is half Fringe, half Blade Runner, it has a very grounded feeling to it–never once did I feel that anything I was seeing was overtly fantastical. It very much is a world that we could exist in, three, four, five decades from now.
There are some interesting twists that are laid out within the first episode that definitely will give the writers a lot of room to play with, expanding a wide net of plot threads that can be explored throughout the first season, and beyond. The cast is very diverse as well; Kennex’s ex-girlfriend is a woman of color, as is Dorian himself. This, along with Fox’s Sleepy Hollow, are some of the more diverse shows that will be airing this season, and I really welcome it.
Would I recommend this show? Utterly and without reservation. It’s going to be a bright, big, dangerous world in the future, it seems, but I’m going to have so much fun watching Kennex and Dorian in it.
Almost Human will premiere November 4th, on Fox.
