Since 2007, TV Club has dissected television episode by episode. Beginning this September, The A.V. Club will also step back to take a wider view in our new TV Reviews section. With pre-air reviews of new shows, returning favorites, and noteworthy finales, TV Reviews doesn’t replace TV Club—as usual, some shows will get the weekly treatment—but it adds a look at a bigger picture.
No new broadcast-network series this fall needed to send several episodes to critics more than Almost Human did. What’s on screen in the pilot is serviceable enough, but it’s also a little boring, like too many of the pilots shepherded to the screen under the aegis of J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions since Abrams departed active television development for the film world. Could this series turn into another Person Of Interest, overcoming a problematic pilot to find all the many fascinating angles in its sci-fi premise? Sure. But it’s also entirely possible it turns into the first season of Revolution, squandering what little promise there is to wander around in an endless rut.
Almost Human is equal parts typical cop show and Blade Runner riff. The series’ universe is one where being a police officer has become so dangerous cops are issued mandatory android partners that function as a weird amalgamation of a police dog, smart phone, and mobile detective lab. The androids do a little rudimentary police work and are more clever than they appear—it would seem some sort of “what is consciousness/sentience” master story arc is in the cards for this show—but they’re mostly there to take a licking before they stop ticking.
Tossed into the middle of this is generic, cop hero Karl Urban, whose partner died in an ambush that Urban is still recovering from more than two years later. He’s called back to the force by higher-up Lili Taylor, who insists he’s the only one she can trust in the wake of growing criminal boldness against the police department, suggesting some kind of betrayal or subterfuge. Urban is reflexively angry at androids, because the plot requires him to be, but he eventually ends up paired with outmoded, about-to-be-sent-to-the-scrap-heap Michael Ealy, whose programming made him seem a little too human (hence the title). Unbothered by this emotional uncanny valley, Urban takes to Ealy more quickly than one might expect for an odd-couple police show, and the two soon take to the streets to figure out the grand conspiracy that lies at the series’ center. (It has something to do with black market biotech.)
The series’ best card to play is Ealy, who is terrific as an android who’s slightly off and has lots of fun being irritating and endearing in equal measure. Fox has had great luck with another quirky, unconventional pairing this fall on Sleepy Hollow, and if Urban were up to what Ealy is doing, the show might be worth giving time to grow. However, in the pilot, Urban is simply too generic a character to care much about, particularly for anyone who’s ever seen a show in this genre before. He lost his partner. He’s addicted to pills. His fiancée mysteriously disappeared in circumstances that weren’t adequately explained to him. He even wanders around in the rain and munches on noodles like he’s in a one-man Blade Runner LARP. It might work if Urban brought some interesting layers to the performance, but he’s mostly gruff.