Apple TV’s adaptation of Martha Wells’ hit book series The Murderbot Diaries has revealed a first-look tease of its titular killer android, with two images of Alexander Skarsgård as Murderbot: Helmet on, and helmet off.
Apple describes the upcoming 10-episode series as a “comedic thriller.” The series is “about a self-hacking security construct who is horrified by human emotion yet drawn to its vulnerable clients. Played by Skarsgård, Murderbot must hide its free will and complete a dangerous assignment when all it really wants is to be left alone to watch futuristic soap operas and figure out its place in the universe.”
All of which is basically accurate to Wells’ multi-award-winning series of novellas and novels, which started in 2017 with All Systems Red. Anticipation for the Murderbot TV series has been a mixed bag for fans of the book series since Skarsgård was announced. Though the protagonist (technically called “SecUnit,” though it wryly thinks of itself as “Murderbot”) has biologically human parts, it stridently resists gender labels and gendered descriptions. The books, narrated by Murderbot, never describe its body with gender or sexual indications of any kind. Hiring a cis male actor to play Murderbot doesn’t make it impossible to be accurate to that aspect of the books, but it certainly leaves the question of accuracy to that aspect wide open in a way that, say, hiring a nonbinary actor wouldn’t have.
It’s all a miniature version of the broader question of a Murderbot television adaptation: How can any visual medium successfully translate Murderbot’s running series of dry jokes to itself, its digitally enhanced perspective, and its unreliable narration? Those things are the fundamental qualities of any Murderbot book, and arguably what built their fandom, and they seem particularly difficult to convey in a TV series.
We’ll find out when the show premieres on Apple TV Plus on May 16.
Source：https://www.polygon.com/tv/526411/murderbot-diaries-alexander-skarsgard
