I feel there was another, cooler version of this show that never got to see the light of day, there are glimpses of it here but only very small ones. The earnest Gamma that gleefully makes pies for John, a random joyful cameo from Rich Hall of all people, and that beautiful overgrown and flooded ruin of London on which the concrete metropolis is built...
Unfortunately the majority of the show feels flaccid and undercooked - characters drift in and out, or sometimes just meander in strange narrative circles and the central trio have the bland and faintly melodramatic air of a teen romance. Lloyd is excellent as the manically repressed Bernard Marx and Joseph Morgan does a good bruised Epsilon but nobody else really shines here as they don't have a lot to work with.
There are obviously things that you can't bring in from the source text, but a shedload of snarky darkness would have been nice, and the reality of a show set in a shallow and facile future is that... well it feels mostly shallow and facile. The foolish and myriad endings didn't help as well, and summoned up bad memories of the misguided "Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams" which seemed to loudly shout at the end of every episode "IT WASN'T BROKE BUT I'VE FIXED IT ANYWAY!"
Unfortunately the majority of the show feels flaccid and undercooked - characters drift in and out, or sometimes just meander in strange narrative circles and the central trio have the bland and faintly melodramatic air of a teen romance. Lloyd is excellent as the manically repressed Bernard Marx and Joseph Morgan does a good bruised Epsilon but nobody else really shines here as they don't have a lot to work with.
There are obviously things that you can't bring in from the source text, but a shedload of snarky darkness would have been nice, and the reality of a show set in a shallow and facile future is that... well it feels mostly shallow and facile. The foolish and myriad endings didn't help as well, and summoned up bad memories of the misguided "Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams" which seemed to loudly shout at the end of every episode "IT WASN'T BROKE BUT I'VE FIXED IT ANYWAY!"