Channel 4’s new series, Humans, is a British version of the Swedish show Real Humans. It is set in a parallel present, a “hyper-real” world exactly like ours, but with the addition of Synths, incredibly life-like robots. Some of them are NHS carers, some are home-help models, and inevitably, there are the sexbots.
“There’s a sex-robot hotel in Korea right now. It’s happening!” laughs Merlin’s Colin Morgan, who plays the mysterious Leo.
If our conversations with the cast are anything to go by, this is a show that wIll get you thinking – and possibly make you afraid of your own phone.
“We already anthropomorphise Roombas, the hoovers” Morgan laughs. “If you go to Amazon and read people’s reviews, it’s not ‘The Roomba does this’ it’s ‘He’s great, I love him, he does this…’ They’re already attributing human qualities… So when these things are in your life and they’re giving you the impression of love and the impression of doing things for you, what does that do to you?
“I think it was Stephen Hawking who recently said that if you do get a proper artificial intelligence, they will overtake mankind,” Morgan continues. “We evolved over millions of years; they evolved over maybe decades. Such a fast period of time. I think it’s scary that that technology, if it could develop itself, it would out-develop us.”
New drama Humans is coming to Channel 4 this June. For more on the biggest TV series, pick up the latest issue of SciFiNow.
