A bomb explodes in a central London pub. Two Synths are lynched by an angry mob. Armed police carry out a raid that ends in a stand-off at gunpoint… Humans has covered a lot of ground since the day Joe Hawkins decided he could do with a bit of help with the hoovering. Counterintuitively, making Humans more specific to post-2016 referendum UK politics has brought the show closer to the tone of the 2012 Swedish original. Anti-‘Hubot’ violence and Hubot terrorist acts of retribution were key to that from the very start. Similar ground was also covered by 2014 zombie drama In The Flesh. That had single-issue party Victus led by Maxine Martin campaigning to keep Britain alive and curtail undead rights. Humans has We Are People led by Claudia Nowak campaigning for a Synth-free country. The overlap goes to show that these are the themes of our time. Farage and co. have cast a long shadow. Speaking of shadows, aside from a few blessed laughs courtesy of Laura and little Sam, the series three opener is sombre in both senses of the word. Power cuts designed to disrupt the Synth community repeatedly throw the rail yard into darkness. Key scenes—Max and Niska’s reunion, the raid on the rail yard—take place at night, lending the feel of an action thriller. Everyone’s struggling. Laura’s taking daily abuse for representing Synth legal rights, and Sophie’s getting stick at school for her parents’ separation. Joe Hawkins is clearly still in love with his wife but his move to a Synth-free town is yet another rash decision that does nothing but alienate her. Niska’s girlfriend has been hospitalised by a terrorist blast, so has turned detective to flush out the Synths responsible. Mia is frustrated by the Synths’ lack of progress and doesn’t know how best to help her people. Coping with much worse is Max, the Christ-like leader of over five hundred Synths to whom he preaches the necessity for turning the other cheek. Max faces supply shortages, a brother in a coma, insurrection in the ranks, and now the loss of his partner Flash in a provocatively cruel murder that would test anyone’s pacifism. Optimism being crushed is very much the mood of this opening episode. Let’s be honest, it’s been very much the mood of real life for a couple of years now. The Hawkins family, our window into normality in this sci-fi drama, has been riven by conflicting attitudes to Synths rather than the EU and immigration, but it’s the same difference. Laura wants newcomers to her country to be treated fairly and with compassion; Joe wants to go back to a time before they ever arrived. In Waltringham (filmed in Hitchin, Herts. in case you were wondering), Joe thinks he’s found his own utopia of sorts. Synths have caused all this trouble, Joe feels. They stole his job, endangered his family, messed up his youngest and took his eldest from him… Life was simpler before Synths, so he’s pressing rewind. It’s not a reasoned or sustainable response, but an emotional one. The conscious Synths are also making emotional choices. The rail yard is splintered between those who subscribe to Max’s message of forgiveness and hope, and those who want revenge. Newcomer Agnes is driven by hostility and resentment towards humans, while a Synth terror cell promises that the humans will pay. Aptly, one rail yard sentry is seen reading Harlan Ellison’s sci-fi story I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, in which an AI tortures a group of humans. Hopefully, not for inspiration. Literature is just one part of the conscious Synths’ awakening. Art of all kinds is seeping in to their world. Max and Flash slow-dance to soul music. A Renaissance-style fresco is painted in the background of one scene. From memory, Mia draws with the accuracy of a plotter the view of the coastline where she fell in love and was betrayed. New to sentience, the Synths are doing what humans have done for centuries by learning about themselves and what they’re capable of. Their development is like a sped-up version of historical hard-won human rights. They debates they’re having are the debates had by the Suffragettes, by Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, by Harvey Milk, and Gloria Steinem and every marginalised group that ever fought for its freedom to exist. The fascinating question in this gripping opener is, are the Synths doomed to repeat the same mistakes as their creators?
