AMC’s Human’s Jonathan Brackley and Sam Vincent Talk Creating An alternate Present!

AMC’s Humans (Sundays, 9/8C) is a new series that explores an alternate present in which the only significance difference is the presence of android/robot servants called Synths. The series explores ideas like whether technology brings us closer together or pushes us apart, and what is sentience and is machine sentience possible – couched in terms of a story that mixes genres from sci-fi to family drama to thriller.

Based on a Swedish series called Real Humans, Humans has been created for its English-speaking audience by Jonathan Brackley and Sam Vincent. During the week, they took some time to speak with a group of journalists/bloggers about the show on a conference call/Q&A session.

Jonathan Brackley: Hi there. This is Jonathan Brackley. I’m here with Sam Vincent. We’re the writers of Humans. Thanks for joining us. We look forward to answering some questions.

Hi guys, thanks so much for talking to us today. I wondered if you could start off by talking about kind of where the idea and everything came from and how the show came to be, which I’m really enjoying by the way.

Brackley:  Thanks very much. Well the show is actually based on a Swedish show called, Äkta människor which translates as, real humans.

And we were approached by Qdos, the British production company that made the show, who we’ve worked with several times over the last two or three years. And they’d won the rights to remake the Swedish version – remake the Swedish show and they asked us if we were interested.

And we watched the original and it was so full of wonderful and fascinating ideas that we jumped at the chance because we thought we could bring our own take to it.

And then is there a favorite part that you guys (unintelligible) about without giving away too many spoilers? Is there like a favorite scene or something that you’re excited for people to see?

Sam Vincent: I will say that in Episode 3 there is a moment that a lot of people; maybe a majority of people will have to watch through their fingers. I’m not giving any way – anything more than that, but it’s a key moment for the show. Yes, we have a few good ones. You, Jon?

Brackley: Yes, seemingly it will be rather spoiler free, but Episode 4 is going to be – yes, the audience is going to be pretty shocked with what happens in Episode 4, so look forward to seeing that one.

Hey, so we just got off the phone with William Hurt, so I just wanted to ask you, it seems to add a lot when you cast a guy like that because he’s kind of like a gray element. He could be a doctor or professor as easily as play one.

Kind of just discuss how you thought of him and casting him, and what does a guy like Hurt do when you add him to your show?

Vincent: Gravitas, in a single word. He just – he is an intellectual himself and I think he just bleeds through into his characters and he just provides such intellectual (unintelligible). It’s just not actually that easy to find an actor who you feel could have done such world-changing, high level work.

So I think more than anything that just his share craft and how brilliantly he is. He brings a huge amount to that part.

And one other thing I wanted to ask, just because this came up while we were talking to him, he was really having a hard time with this conference call kind of deal… to think of just the kinds of things we would think of with the show, that all this technology somehow makes this in some ways more distant.

In other words, he wasn’t used to not even knowing where these voices were coming from and so forth. Tell me philosophically how you feel? To what extent technology brings us together and to what extent it actually doesn’t. It actually isolates us more.

Vincent: Well I think it’s doing both. But the – I think the thing is that we’re so in the middle of this process that we can’t possibly hope to understand it properly yet.

Yes, you know we hear all the time how the younger generation or not just younger generation are forever buried in their phones and staring at their phones.

But the question – the real question is what are they doing on their phones? They actually – most of the time they are communicating with each other and other people. People that they may not even know or that they may have never had the chance to meet or interact with if they didn’t have this technology.

And we spend so much time expressing ourselves through technology and conducting our emotional lives and relationships, at least partially through technology or with the help of technology.

So I think, you know, it’s not a definitive answer in some ways, but I think it is bringing us together in new ways and pushing us apart in other ways. And think maybe that’s the way it’s always been in a way.

When the telephone was invented it was – there was a huge amount of worry that it would have all kinds of strange effects on human relationships. But we seem to have endured. I think we just keep adapting with it.

This – one thing that I really found interesting about these two episodes we were able to see was that you know, flaws obviously make characters really memorable. But through the Synth, we not only experience or they kind of pull out the flaws of other characters, and then they themselves are also shown their flaws or their shortcomings as synthetics.

So can you talk about designing the Synth as this kind of plot device to reflect flaws and shortcoming in characters?

Brackley: You know I think as you’ve rightly pointed out that the humans are sort of thrown into sharp relief by the sort of perfectness of the Synths in their sort of movement, and also the way they, you know, conduct themselves.

I think that was a very sort of deliberate choice physically for us when we were creating this show. We wanted the Synths to move in a very graceful way and that was borne out of a sort of very practical concern because we wanted to treat the show in a very realistic way.

And if these things really did exist, they would use a massive, massive amount of power. So they would have to store that in batteries so when they did move they could never waste a single movement. Everything would have to be very economical. And so they tend to move with a very sort of graceful smoothness, yes.

Vincent: Yes, and I would say that, you used the word reflect. I think a lot of it is that they are reflections, particularly William – George, the character played by William Hurt. His Synth is, you know, it doesn’t have a personality. It’s not Synthian.

And yet because it’s been so long with him and has absorbed so many memories, it has taken on this new value and is now a kind of reflection of the happier years in the past that George spent with his wife before she died.

And the – so I think the reflection and as Jon says, providing a counterpoint is a real sort of human messiness and (unintelligible) is kind of one of the sort of key (unintelligible) of the show and it kind of brings out all of your, particularly in the character of Laura, brings out so many insecurities and paranoia that might have been already there.

And could you each share maybe one moment in real life where you were creeped out by some type of technological advance or machine or electronic.

Vincent: That’s a good question. I’m just trying to think. I’ve had some strange changes (unintelligible), definitely.

Brackley: I don’t really think. I mean I’m still freaked out by, you know, ads that are targeted at me by things that I’ve looked up on the Internet. That still freaks me out because I often forget that I’ve looked for the thing in the first place. So when I see the ad I think, oh, my god, they just looked into my brain. But then I’ll remember that I probably, you know, searched for it on Google about half an hour before.

Vincent: That’s true. But what’s happening there is that your natural thought process is the natural process of forgetting. You know technology has taken advantage of the fact that you forget, to sell you something. So that’s kind of scary.

So I asked Mr. Hurt this and I’m going to ask you this in a more of a context as writers and show runners. One of the things which has guided robotics even going back to terrible TV shows of the 70s like Holmes and Yo-Yo was the Asimov’s three rules of robotics.

How has that and just the fact that this was originally a Swedish show, influenced you, controlled you, and how do you make your own stamp on things?

The way I asked him the question he brought up; and I’ll ask you this too; I’d like to know, are those rules enough with Synthetics which are really more than robots?

Vincent: Well no, they’re probably not enough. I mean we obviously have a very – I think – well to answer the first part of your question, we have to – you know we’re very aware that we’re standing on the shoulders of giants when it comes to this kind of stories.

There have been brilliant examples going back long before some actually. Asimov, you know, really is the – really owns this territory. The sort of existential robot story you know, is owned by him.

I don’t think we – what we have to do is think about your perspective on it and how times have changed and what you’ve got to add to it, if anything, and what has changed.

I think a lot of it – there is quite a lot to add. And also from our perspective, this kind of ensemble which is mainly kind of conducted through domestic settings in a very grounded reality that is not recognized to be the future in any way. But instead, a parallel presence.

That – all those kind of things sort of we felt gave us a platform and justified returning to this territory because it really did give us new ways to explore it on a very human and a very personal relationship level.

In answer to the second part of your question in terms of are the laws of robotics enough, I think it is probably not. You know we had a very direct homage to Asimov. At the end of Episode 1 we mentioned the, what we called the Asimovian blocks.

And we called them that which you know, are based on the three laws, or an extension of. We call them blocks because we felt well a law is something that – is something for conscious people because you have to choose to follow a law because you can break it. Whereas the conventional, everyday Synthetics in our show, they could not choose to break a law. So instead we called them blocks because they’re just sheer pieces of programming and cannot be contravened.

But we also show that it’s not enough. If you know, when you watch Episode 1, Anita is constantly — and you know it’s hopefully quite amusing effect — regurgitating these long pieces of kind of regulatory legalize speak about what exactly she is and isn’t allowed to do.

We think that they would be endlessly customizable, you know. You think you would say, you know if you wanted to say, don’t stroke the cat on a Tuesday, you know, you would never have to tell it to do that again.

So it would be a very kind of complex master/servant relationship and customizable, and with lots and lots and lots of complicated regulations. Like we had long conversations about, well if you’re walking down the road your Synth sees somebody about to be – you know, have a crane full of bricks dropped on their head do they – are they obliged to just make sure you’re okay, or are they obliged to keep members of the public safe?

To what ratio? So are they going to have to ascribe that? Are they supposed a save a dog running out in front of a truck. And if that damages their (unintelligible) writes them off?

So there have been endlessly kind of complex amount of regulations and rules governing them. And I think I’m probably going on a bit now, so I should just stop there.

No, thank you. I mean some of your questions there with the dogs and stuff, I’ve had people who are doing autonomous car work at several of the different auto manufacturers and it’s the same thing. Do you hit the grandma or do you hit the kid or do you hit the dog or do you save the passenger inside.

Vincent: Right, exactly. And the thing that will happen with autonomous cars is there – as soon as the first person is hurt or killed in an accident with one, they’ll suspend the entire operation and we’ll all return to driving ourselves. In which case we’ll all return to killing each other on the roads at far, far higher rates.

You know that is – that’s what’s going to happen with an autonomous car because we – it is our instinctive institutional mistrust of machines doing these things for us, even you know, when statistically I’m sure that in the long run they’ll be proved to be vastly safer. All it will take is that one accident for us to throw it all out the window again.

Well I wanted to know a follow-up with one of the reporters. With Humans being based on the Swedish show, Real Humans, what elements did you take from the Swedish version, and what new elements did you bring in?

Brackley: I think we based most of our characters on characters or amalgamations of characters from the original Swedish show. And I think certainly in the first episode at least, you see quite a lot of similarities in their plot strands where they start.

However we take ours in a completely different direction. So by the end of our series, all our characters are in a completely different place to where they are in the Swedish show.

I think probably overall, generally our show is probably a bit darker than the original Swedish show. The material sort of lends itself to exploring sort of darker, seamier side of humanity I think.

And we were allowed to do that, particularly because we were on a network in the UK – Channel 4. And on AMC here, we’re allowed to do that. Where in the Swedish show was on a more mainstream network and they couldn’t really do that.

Okay, well when creating some of the different Synth characters on the show, how did you go about writing each one differently to give them their unique look and perspective?

Vincent: I think a lot of that had to do with working out their purpose in the world that we’ve created. So for example Anita is intended to be sort of a basic domestic model. So servitude is sort of her primary function.

Whereas someone like Vera, who’s introduced to look after George, is a lot more sort of overtly a carer Synth. And therefore has a bit more agency to try and look after his wellbeing and his health and, you know, hopefully comic effect.

And in the second episode she’s a bit too zealous in her pursuit of his physical health.

So yes, it kind of depends on what they – what the Synth’s are designed to do in the world that we created.

What are also your own thoughts on Synth’s and the fact that we may be closer than ever to bringing this sort of technology to reality?

Vincent: Well I think — it’s Sam speaking here — I think we both say that we’re relatively technically optimistic about everything. We tried very much in the show to be quite neutral on the question of whether or not this was a good or bad thing. We wanted to show lots of good aspects of it, and lots of bad aspects of it and let the audience decide, to present it as neither a utopia nor a dystopia.

But my own views on it are that humanity is only going in one direction. We are not going to suddenly slam on the brakes on technological progress. What we have to do, we’re going to keep going so it’s a matter of adaptation and preparation and understanding how this is changing us.

Because that’s the really interesting thing. And I hope this is what the show is about; its core, is how is technology changing us and how will it continue to change us. And that more than anything is the key here.

With Ex Machina, Chappie, Age of Ultron and now Humans, this has been a busy year centering on robotics and the idea of artificial intelligence. Why do you believe these ideas are becoming so popular in modern society? That’s it.

Brackley: Yes, well I think it’s very interesting because we don’t have, you know – I think Alex Garland wrote and director of Ex Machina said something like this himself, in that its interesting how much it’s in the air given that we – you know, it’s not heralded by any true advance in what is called true sentience, as in artificial intelligence that could really think on a human level.

So what I personally think it is about is that the last few years our technology has become – our everyday technology, our phones, iPads, and computers, etcetera, have become so much more intuitive in the way we connect to them.

We now use our technology so much more to conduct our personal and professional and emotional lives and conduct relationships really, and express ourselves through social media and things like that which we access via our phone or via our table or computer.

That process has kind of increased exponentially over the last decade. And along with our technology becoming so much easier to use, and seemingly more able to understand us. Case in point, Siri on the iPhone and it’s – you know, we no longer have to have kind of complicated systems of input and interfaces. We can just speak to our technology and we can speak to our phone and it will understand us.

And to think that alongside that, it’s becoming powerful and more mysterious. It’s evermore kind of locked away from us. We can’t go unscrewing it. We’re not encouraged to go finding out how it really works. And if we did, because it’s also so much more complicated and powerful.

So I think that maybe there’s a little bit of unease about the disconnect between the mysterious, ever-increasing power it has, and yet its seeming ability to understand us better and better, even as we understand it less and less.

This is kind of going on what you were saying about different Synths they made – being made for different purposes. And I was just mainly wondering, I was just curious about it was one thing I wondered during watching the first two episodes. Is the idea of some of them like pretending to be completely inhuman when they have kind of the human thought process and all that, especially with Max?

And I was just curious, couldn’t Leo have maybe given him a directive going in, where he said something like, you know, protect me. Where he could have stood up for him but the people wouldn’t have thought anything of it? Or, is that just something that they don’t do?

Brackley: I mean that’s kind of a rule that we’ve written in. I mean you wouldn’t be able to tell your Synth to hurt someone else, because Synths can’t hurt humans. So you would have been unable to sort of act in that way. So that would sort of kind of prevent any sort of, you know, any sort of command to do so.

I guess that’s true. They couldn’t like differentiate between who’s good and who’s bad. Sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off.

Vincent: No, no you’re right. That would be a kind of very complex system, algorithmic sort of probability system, judging what they do. But we think overall it would kind of, for legal reasons and everything, it would lean so much more towards the passive, you know.

If something is bad they call for help. They take passive action. The last thing they would ever do is anything that involved laying their hands on another human being. That is the worst possible outcome.

There probably is, in their kind of algorithmic probability data set, a situation whereby they would. But the circumstances would have to be so incredibly extreme I think.

So yes, if any kind of violent intervention, even if it’s a self-defense one, would attract extraordinary attention because that’s just not what they do.

Okay, that makes a lot more sense. I was just curious after – because I wondered that.

Vincent: So it’s a good question. Thank you.

Sure. And then I also have a fan question. They want to know, if by the end we’ll get a complete explanation of kind of what Leo is. Because obviously he’s got some strange things going on.

Vincent: We can be defensive.

Brackley: Yes, the simple answer to that is yes. The question that there’s a mystery strand will all be answered by the end of the series.

I was wondering, was it difficult in the plotting and writing process to sort of balance the emotional and ethical issues that you wanted to cover with the technical and scientific part? Like to find that balance between the two?

That was a challenge. Yes, you’re right, it’s about balancing those different elements of the show because it’s short of a new and slightly unusual show in a way because it has elements of genre in it. And there’s a sort of a thriller aspect.

But it’s also very much sort of a domestic drama and an emotional drama. Because when we came to it we wanted to explore the sort of ensemble of characters and explore this world in a very sort of 360 degree way, rather than focusing on one sort of narrow aspect of it.

Vincent: Yes, I mean I think – so it’s an interesting thing. Whenever you have a kind of potential piece of tension like that, I think we always try to say, well how do we make them work together. How do we make one flow out of the other rather than kind of potentially clashing?

So we tried to make the emotional and the ethical flow out of the current technical questions, and vice versa.

So for example, you know, we established there’s a kind of a technical logic thing offered. You know Anita is not permitted by her regulations. This is in Episode 2, so I don’t whether this is slightly spoiler.

But it’s – she’s not permitted to hug Sophie, the little girl. And yet – and then we have a moment where clearly she breaks that rule which kind of hopefully creates a kind of quite unsettling, scary moment. We don’t know why we’re doing that.

So we try and make the two things work in concert as much as possible. I mean one of the actual bigger challenges was, as Jon says, making a family drama painting and making those dynamics within the family just a very kind of real, grounded domestic, emotional issues; making them work as hard as possible and feel that the stakes inward in the family; the emotional stakes, are just as high as the stakes for the Synths which, you know, are literally a lot higher.

So we needed to make sure they matched and everything kind of earned its place. And I think if we manage that then we’re very happy because that was one of the main challenges I think going into the development of it.

All right. I think you did a great job. I really enjoyed the two episodes I watched and I plan to continue to watching.

 

Sure, my (unintelligible) in those same lines my question is, and this is sort of a difficult question but there’s so much content out there right now why should people spend our time with your show, this is kind of your chance to really sell it.

Vincent: I would say that we are the only show about people’s relationships with their technology that is on at the moment that I can think of.

Brackley: Yeah. I mean I, I agree, I mean there’s certainly because of the you know, and this is partly coming from the original Swedish show and the, the things that we loved about it and the things we brought into this version but there’s certainly no other show like it on TV I don’t think that explores a world in the sort of 360 degree way looking at so many different aspects and that’s even before you sort of bring, take into account that there are robots in it too.

I, if I may just say I think because the robots was so you know humanlike that really draws emotion right there. They don’t seem like machines, you know what I mean? So that may sound very rudimentary but that was the thing that really drew me in.

Vincent: Yeah. Well maybe, maybe they’re more, maybe they’re more than just machines.

Hi there, with you in the show here, and I’m based out of Seattle since (William) was wanting to know where people were based out of when we’re talking, doing this I look, I looked at your, you knew you were going to have both an American and a British audience.

How does that affect you, because we have morals and different tastes, I mean power companies worry about a product kettle tea going on after the football game, while our power companies worry about, about the football game coming on (unintelligible).

Because of that, and we’ve had different laws going on with technology from Dolly the sheep to cloning, we have more of a religious affect here, and that’s something I didn’t see you touch on actually as well is the, religion has not really became part of the show yet.

So there’s kind of two questions there.

Vincent: Well, picking up on the religion, religion aspect it does come into it in quite a, not really kind of very heavy way, we don’t, we don’t kind of create a large story out it, story line out of it but it does come in in hopefully a quite unexpected way in Episode 6 actually.

We explore, we did something we always wanted to do from the start and we ended up doing it in a quite a life touch way. But we, it resulted in really in one of my favorite scenes actually in the whole series when we bring together the idea of God with, with these machines and yeah I think it’s quite a special scene down, especially down to the actors involved actually.

And it’s just little things but it’s, I think it’s a really nice moment. So we do, we do touch on that a bit, yeah.

Now with, with the, the British, with the America versus British takes on a lot of things how did that affect it or did it?

Brackley: It didn’t really affect the way that we approached the writing of the show, I think you know the, the kind of the things and the situations that we were writing about I think are universal and certainly to a sort of a, an English speaking audience, and I think sort of the American sort of British, so American cultures with our speech in American culture and sort of Britain I think it’s probably goes a little bit the other way as well.

Whereas I think in the original Swedish show there are things that wouldn’t have translated as well to an English speaking audience sort of cultural differences.

Vincent: Yes I would say that we never, you know once we realized we were going to be working with AMC we never tried to kind of turn it into kind of some hodgepodge of tones between English, partially because there’s so much cross pollination now that you know, American audiences seem to be very comfortable with British voices and British worlds and of course vice versa but you know the latter has been true for, for decades but I think you know we’re big believers and the more specific you are the more universal you are.

And if you’re able to capture a certain world truthfully you’re actually it’s going to stand a much better chance of connecting to a wide range of people and if you try and kind of compromise and correct some kind of mid-Atlantic netherworld with then you know neither Americans nor British audiences would recognize as being their own.

But as Jon says, we’re, the big thing that it’s really about should, should work anywhere, you know it’s about technology and I think we, we’re all in exactly the same place, so it’s, I’m just trying to think of any changes we actually made and with one eye on the American audience.

And I would say the one thing that I can remember is we took out the word milk float because our American partner said, asked us what a milk float was one too many times, they didn’t ask us to take it out but we realized that that wasn’t going to translate. If you don’t know what a milk float is it’s a funny little strange electric vehicle that delivers milk in the morning.

That makes sense, the fact of delivering milk in the morning is kind of almost a dead concept in America today anyway.

Brackley: Exactly.

My question is I guess a little specific, at the end of Episode 1 Anita takes the little girl off in the rain and everything and I was wondering did, did she do that for a specific purpose or was she just, is was that part of a plan of screwing with Laura’s head because at the end of Episode 2 you see that Anita is really happy that she’s getting sent back. So I was wondering what could you tell me about that moment.

Brackley: It’s difficult to answer that comprehensively without sort of spoilering things, but I think it’s safe to say that there is several levels of complexity bubbling underneath Anita’s surface, things that are sort of getting collided and confused so.

Vincent: Yes. There’s some, there’s a struggle going on within her which is leading to instincts becoming sort of corrupted and misguided, so her action there will become very clear and as, as a clearing house she looks at the window and the rain on the window just before she does what she does at the end of Episode 1.

But it becomes clear I think later on why she glitches in that way and does that particular thing. Of course, you know, of course it’s very dangerous and worrying but it’s not necessarily malevolent, or although maybe it is. That’s I can’t really think of anything more to say that wouldn’t spoil it, sorry.

Well what about the things that, I felt like Anita was, was playing with Laura’s head a couple of times where she gives her kind of creepy looks and says stuff specifically to instigate her, was that, is that actually like in, since we’re seeing it kind of from Laura’s perspective was that in Laura’s head or was that really what Anita was doing.

Vincent: That, that we really do want the audience to decide, I’m sorry to be, I’m sorry if that’s slightly annoying, it’s a bit, you know we, we tried to kind of balance that stuff to really make you think not only kind of make you wonder what’s happening with Anita, is she just glitching or is it something more sinister happening.

And if so, but even if it’s just glitching why on earth is she glitching in this way.

And then also for Laura to actually doubt herself and for others to doubt her, wonder if she’s really seeing this, you know Laura’s under stresses and strains of her own and you know it’s possible.

And we kind of, we go there a bit, you know further on in the series that Laura starts to think well am I just imagining this, you know am I, am I just seeing things or am I reading too much into this because I’m already edgy and paranoid about aspects of my own life or is there something really actually quite dangerous going on.

But that you know we wanted to balance that very fine so I’m very really happy that you’re asking me that question but we, we can’t really give you the answer but yeah, it’s great that you’re asking that.

All right, that seems fair. Okay well that’s, that’s what’s intriguing me. Then my last question is can you talk a little bit about doctor, this is Dr. McKillin – is that how you say his name?

Vincent: Dr. Millican.

About his relationship with the two versions of the sense that he has, the one that he kind of treats like his son and then his kind of prisoner or his, his nurse/warden.

Vincent: Yeah.

Can you talk about the, not the diversity but the difference between those two relationships?

Vincent: Yeah we wanted to do a story about how we invest, we can invest so much in inanimate objects, we can have such a kind of, we can have a rich and fulfilling emotional relationship with something that doesn’t fill the emotion back, be it an object or beloved heirloom, something that somebody gave you or a, or even an animal.

You know obviously animals have different levels of consciousness but you know we, we can feel deeply affectionate towards, you know certain kinds of animals that may never acknowledge you, you know in their entire lives because they’re a stick (unintelligible) something but it doesn’t stop off from loving them if they’re our pets.

And what we, we’re trying to do is the Odi story we show that Odi has become even though he’s, you know an unthinking machine, he’s become a repository, a leaky repository of precious memories for George. Odi was alive, Odi was with them, with George and his wife when his wife was alive the three of them have, you know had some really happy times together.

The wife had died, George has had a stroke, and the person who kind of holds on and keeps the memories alive because of course he can record things perfectly, or he has been able to recall things perfectly up until recently, he’s Odi so he becomes this kind of reflection of, of the beloved past and an aid memoir I think that, I think that’s a phrase, I may have just made that up.

But and so that’s why he’s so incredibly precious to George, you know that’s where I think some of that fondness comes from is, is what he represents and what we’ve put into these things you know, is what we’ve poured into the, we’ve poured our feelings into them and we’ve become so incredibly attached.

And of course that’s not the case at all with Vera when she shows up because she, he doesn’t have that history with her, he doesn’t have that richness, emotional richness with her and also she’s giving him horrible bowls of low sodium soup when he’s asked for a grilled cheese.

This questions is, continues on the whole George line of questioning. I mean I don’t know how specific you could be, I mean you don’t have to be specific but how, because I really enjoy the, the connection between George and Odi but how far is George going to go to protect Odi?

Brackley: George, I think George will go as far as he can to protect Odi but you know he is limited by several sets of circumstances, one being his sort of social circumstances, his sort of physical capabilities and the fact that he’s got Vera looking over his shoulder the entire time.

But you know his, his beloved Odi so dear to him that he will, he will go to great lengths and, and to protect him and keep him with him.

Vincent: Yes we, I think we have some fun with it and then, you know the story you have some fun turns and it has some sad turns definitely. And I think it’s a lot to do with loyalty, it’s the loyalty that George fills to Odi and but also the loyalty that Odi doesn’t feel but the, the loyalty that Odi displays towards George ends up being quite an important part of the story I think.

I’m sorry, we’re being frustratingly oblique, we’re just trying to, we’re trying to protect some of the, some of the surprises I think.

Vincent: There’s, there’s some sad turns and there’s, there’s definitely some, some fun as well. There’s you know who knows, I mean what do you do when you’re being oppressed by a sinister jailer, you know you try and escape.

So will, so will some of these stories all intersect eventually or is they going, like in the first couple episodes it seems that everybody’s sort of in their own world with what they’re going, what they’re dealing with?

Brackley: Yes. All the, all the ensemble stories are separate at the moment but all of them will converge as we progress through the series meeting in the sort of finale in Episode 7 and 8.

Vincent: Yes the character, you know in unexpected ways as well characters come, but they, they all cross each other’s paths a lot.

Awesome. And which story lines do you think will actually hook in, hook viewers into first like initially?

Brackley: That’s an interesting question, I think you know, the fact that we have a sort of a regular everyday family that’s the heart of the show I think draws people in, that sort of domestic setting and the sort of familiarity I think people really respond to.

But something we found talking to people here and back home where the first two episodes have been shown on Channel 4, is the George and Odi story line, people really respond to that.

Vincent: Yeah I think that’s made a huge part of the credit is down to the, what the actors did with that, William Hurt and Will Tudor is Odi and then also Rebecca Front as Vera comes into it is immensely funny and sinister at the same time.

I think they just, they did a wonderful job, so I think that is really striking people emotionally but I think the kind of eerie threat of interloper in the home is kind of quite a, an ancient and wonderful story format and whether or not trying to figure out what exactly Anita, what’s going on with Anita and just how dangerous she is and what she wants if anything is a real driver of intrigue, brilliantly driven by Gemma’s performance and by the performance of the whole family.

Yeah she’s pretty amazing.

Vincent: And then there’s also the more conventional I think, you know, thriller element, you know the much more sort of action pacey element with Leo and Max and, and their quest to reunite the group which kind of provides us with a good counterpoint really against the more domestic stuff. So…

That’s all right, sorry to cut you off but finally did you guys get, like work closely with the directors or, and the actors on, on how, how each Synth would act or is that just like you put it on the page and then the director kind of took it from there?

Brackley: In terms of the sort of the how the Synth behaves in their Synth movements in the original pilot script we wrote in the stage directions that they moved like someone doing a Japanese tea ritual, and that was only, the only real information that we gave apart from the fact that we stipulated we didn’t want anything sort of classically robotic, no sort of head cocking or so curious looks. And…

Vincent: It actually said no head cocking in capitals in Episode 1 script actually.

Brackley: Yeah.  But then when we got our director on board, Sam Donovan who directed the first two episodes he worked very closely with a guy called (Dan O’Neill) who is, works for a British dance and movement theater company called Frantic Assembly, he’s a choreographer and together they developed a sort of a language of movement of how these Synths would move.

So all our actors who played Synths goes into the main cast and our supporting actors went to Synth school to learn how to move and behave, and all the movement was kind of borne out to a sort of a practical thought because we wanted to approach this in as really as big a way as possible, these things are just use up a huge amount of battery power, so there would never be a wasted movement so they’d be very economic with how they move so that would sort of make them very sort of slow and graceful.

So I was wondering, you were talking earlier about all of the different series and books and things like that that have dealt with the sort of robot question, do you guys have any particular favorite things or that was an inspiration for you while you were writing (unintelligible) or different things that really speaks to your imagination?

Vincent: Well, we certainly went back to Asimov’s short story, robot short stories, you know there’s actually a volume you can get, he wrote so many robot short stories and there’s a, there’s a very thick volume you can get, I think you know there’s about 50 stories in there and it just about his, his robot related ones.

And there are, you know just a few you know, there’s a real scattering of absolute masterpieces among them, you know he explored that area from so many directions and so he was, he was definitely a big influence.

And then we also have we, you know we had to think of all the wonderful instances of AI and robots of various kinds that you know we’ve seen in cinema and on TV, less so I think on TV, it’s more the, been more the province of films historically and yeah, things like Blade Runner and AI itself, which of course stars William Hurt and 2001, you know I think Hal is one of the, is probably my favorite instance of artificial intelligence in the cinema of all time.

So yes we have a kind of very aware of all of those kind of wonderful references and we just have had to work hard to learn what we could from them and also try and avoid doing anything too similar to them and also finding out what was new, what was fresh, what was the new take on this, what was the new perspective on this idea that we’ve been fascinated by since Frankenstein, you know if not before.

All right great. Thank you very much. I just have one more really tiny question. I’ve noticed, what I really like about this really it kind of tells the story from kind of the robot’s perspective, or the Synths perspective as well as the human’s. Do you think there’s ever going to be a time when we kind of have to take sides or is this going to be about the characters and their choices or is that spoilers?

Vincent: Do we, do we have to take sides on the so we didn’t catch that last bit, we, do you have to take sides on the Synths or humans?

That’s not where the kind of conflict line resides necessarily because I think we very much have, we have humans who are a big supporter of the Synths and humans who are definitely against them and think they pose a very dire threat to humanity and we have Synths that you know want to integrate with humanity and live peacefully alongside and we have Synths who come to starkly different conclusions.

So there’s kind of, it’s kind of a more complicated picture than that, there isn’t kind of one side to drop on, it’s more about which particular character or characters you, you find yourself sympathizing with. But there, yeah there’s definitely more than two sides.

I’m not sure if this is even something you can answer without spoiling it but they’re asking more about Leo and if he kind of knows what he is or he’s himself or he’s going to be trying to figure that out, because all we see so far I know is it looks like Max kind of plugs him in but he’s bleeding so I don’t know.

Brackley: Well I think it’s safe to say that we can safely say that Leo definitely does know what he is.

I think we, we, it’s probably too much of a spoiler to definitively say what that thing is but you know we have humans and we have Synths and we have Leo. Leo is definitely a unique being in this world.

Vincent: Yeah. He’s, he’s one of a kind Leo and he definitely has a reason, he, and we would definitely find out exactly what he is and how he came to be by the end of the series, so no question of that and just, we’re just lucky that we got an actor like Colin Morgan who could portray you know somebody so unique with such, with such it’s an otherworldly intensity and charisma that he does.

So yes, keep, keep watching all will be revealed, definitely.

And just quickly is there a chance that this could come back for a second season or is this just kind of limited?

Vincent: It’s, well we wanted and we always knew we were designing the show with a lot of mystery and a lot of kind of intriguing backstory to find out over the series particularly in the case of you know Leo and Anita and things and but we thought if we’re going to do that you, you, you know our view on it was that we wanted to pay it off.

And we wanted to kind of provide a really kind of satisfying conclusion to those mysteries and, and reveal them all and get to the bottom of everything as the story moves forward and the stakes increase and the season goes on.

So we reveal that mystery but absolutely we idea is for this story to return and we hope we can come back to it because we’ve got a lot more to say about these characters and a long way to go with them and, and the work, and we have a concept for the future of the series where the world has moved on a little bit and changed a little bit more yet again and all of our characters have to respond to, a rather different landscape.

But we have to see, we have to see how we get on with Season 1 first and all being well we’ll be back definitely but yeah we don’t leave anything hanging, we didn’t want to do that.

Vincent: All right. Thank you very much everyone…

Brackley: Yeah thanks everyone. That was great. I enjoyed that.

Vincent: Thanks for your interest and really hope you enjoy the show. Thank you.