Despite the ominous title, Murderbot is a dark comedy. Based on Martha Wells’ book series The Murderbot Diaries, Apple TV+’s upcoming show stars Alexander Skarsgård as the titular ‘bot, a damaged weapon who would rather watch soap operas on his hard drive than actually, you know, murder. Despite wanting to keep his secret, he keeps getting drawn into helping humans and might even decide he likes them. The jury’s still out. Perhaps improbably, NPR provided Wells with the pullquote, “we are all a little bit Murderbot.”
Debuting with two episodes on May 16, 2025, the first season will take us almost to Comic-Con, ending on July 11. In addition to a fine literary source, the show boasts Chris and Paul Weitz as creators. They’re two talents who work better together than separately, and their input has me interested. David S. Goyer serves as executive producer, but it’s really the Weitz Brothers’ show as they wrote, directed, and produced it under their Depth of Field banner for Paramount Television Studios. Martha Wells serves as “Consulting Producer,” which I hope means the Weitzes actually did consult with her.
In addition to Skarsgård, the show includes Noma Dumezweni, genre great and great comic book writer David Dastmalchian, Sabrina Wu, Akshay Khanna, Tattiawna Jones, and Tamara Podemski.
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