(Re)View: "Humans."

A familiar idea gets a fresh, emotional boost as the genre of AI in sci-fi expands to real world concerns. An excellent, often overlooked series that went three seasons and was always compelling.

There was a year when the publicity team at AMC — a lovely bunch, by the way — was planning something special and was very quietly asking some critics what their favorite AMC show was (probably not hard to figure out from the reviews, but remember the cable channel killed it with “Mad Men,” “Breaking Bad” and “The Walking Dead,”) and since I don’t like surprises wasn’t fully playing along. Let the reviews speak for themselves. But no, said a friend who worked at AMC, this is different and don’t be difficult and do you have a show or character where, let’s say, there’s might be a photo involved?

I said, yeah, Gemma Chan and “Humans.”

The answer back was that literally nobody said that. Perhaps the unspoken part was, “So maybe pick something more obvious and make this easier for us.” But I didn’t and, being a pain in the ass, I suppose, resulted in Gemma Chan from "Humans” being featured in a surprisingly large and well done framed photo that, long after that discussion when I’d forgotten completely about it, she/it arrived at my door. Oh! I guess this is why they asked.

The framed picture was a lot nicer (and larger) than I expected. I don’t think anyone else said, “Humans,” but that also says a lot about me, I suppose.

And so here we are, years later, with three full seasons of the AMC series now available to stream on Amazon Prime. I love this show. Even if I have to admit that, despite that love, I was so crushed under the churn of new content back in those days that I completely missed, at the time, the fact that Season 3 had been released. It was another in a long line of reminders that television is impossible to keep track of, even when you’re getting paid to essentially do that.

But hey, if you ever come over to my house and hang your coat in the foyer, Gemma Chan will be looking at you.