70 LISTENER MAY 26 2018
TV REVIEW
I
don’t own a robot. But I do own
an iPhone. So this week I asked
Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant, the
question I’ve been asking myself
for weeks: what’s going on
in Westworld?
“This is about you,
not me,” she answered,
enigmatically, infuriatingly.
But I couldn’t fault the
logic. We’re near midway
through the second season
of the enigmatic, infuriat-
ing Westworld, and it’s clear
this sci-fi robot drama is
more about me (and you),
and not the show’s now-
mutinous android “hosts”.
Of course, it also means Siri
has no idea what the hell is
going on, either.
This is a series, for those who
haven’t made its acquaintance, set in
the not-too-distant future in a Wild
West-style theme park where guests
can do whatever the hell they like to
the incredibly lifelike androids pro-
grammed not to harm humans.
If you haven’t seen the complex,
sprawling first season, don’t read on.
But during that, two of the hosts –
Dolores and brothel keeper Maeve- appeared to achieve sentience after
the park’s co-creator, Robert Ford
(Anthony Hopkins), fiddled with
their programming and set the park
on the road to rebellion. In a big
The revolting robots
of Westworld’s first
series are back with
a vengeance in the
second outing.
When Westworlds collide
Behind all that
gratuitous sex
and violence,
there’s an
okay drama.
twist, his loyal assistant, Bernard, turned out to
be not human, but an android version of Ford’s
long-dead partner Arnold. The series concluded
with Dolores putting a bullet in Ford’s head, before
leading a massacre of the board of Delos Corp, the
nasty outfit that owns the park.
It took me two goes to get through series one,
first screened in 2016: some of the violence,
particularly from the Man in Black (eventually
revealed as the park’s majority shareholder), was
far too graphic, ugly and vile. However, behind all
that gratuitous sex and violence, there’s an okay
drama, which, like all good dystopian fiction, is
having a bit of a chat to its audience about theworld we live in and where we might be headed.
There was plenty in there about the nature of
reality and memory, of course, some of which
made sense, and some of which was pure nonsense.
But what it mainly seemed to be, at least to me,
was a fairly blunt allegory about morally bankrupt
Silicon Valley capitalists, their gung-ho approach
to technology and our childlike embrace of every
new, shiny bit of tech they send our way, no matter
what the eventual cost to us.
The first series was, in the end, rather ponder-
ous. And there were so many ideas bouncing
around that it did rather feel as if its makers were
throwing those ideas at a storyboard to see which
ones would stick. Of course, that made for the
sort of pseudy talking points loved by Redditposters and fanboys everywhere.
Still, as the Ford’s secret plans
revealed themselves, as Dolores
found the centre of the first series’
mysterious “maze” and as the long-
foreshadowed rebellion by the hosts
began, Westworld seemed to have its
rambling narrative under control.A
nd then came season two.
Dolores, once a robot slave and
now apparently in full control
of her destiny, has embarked on a
bloody campaign as Westworld’s
Spartacus, though to no
discernible or cogent end
(is she simply playing out
Ford’s last narrative?).
Concurrently, Maeve
continues to wander
the park, looking for her
daughter, a story it’s hard
to care about. And there
appear now to be two other
parallel theme parks, one a
sort of British colonial “Raj-
world”, the other a park
that looks like it’s based
on James Clavell’s Shōgun.
And in both these previ-
ously unseen worlds, the
hosts may be rebelling too. Oh, and
Bernard has discovered a deeper, even
more evil Delos Corp plot to combine
hosts and humans. Phew!
But all that means that what nar-
rative focus Westworld had in series
one has disappeared as worlds (three
at least) collide, to very little coher-
ent effect – other than, I suppose,
to continue to stoke a healthy fear
of sentient robots. This leaves us all
wandering lost inside a huge theme
park with too many rides – which,
one supposes, is apt. l
WESTWORLD, SoHo, Sky 010, Monday,
1pm and 8.30pm.GREG
DIXON
Dolores: now
apparently in
control of her
destiny.