Well, I have good news and bad news about Apple TV+’s new show, Murderbot. The good news is, everyone is gay!! The titular Murderbot (Alexander Skarsgård) is assigned to a group of humans he calls “hippie scientists” from a planetary commune and every last one of them is queer. We have nonbinary Pin-Lee (played by nonbinary actor Sabrina Wu), their wife Arada (Tattiawna Jones), another point in their triangle Ratthi (Akshay Khanna), and the rest of their crew who are also revealed to be queer (or at least non-traditional by our Earthly human standards) along the way: Bharadwaj (Tamara Podemski), Gurathin (David Dastmalchian), and their fearless leader Mensah (Noma Dumezweni). This diverse group of misfits is the perfect example of a found family, for all its friendship, support, in-fighting, messy relationship drama, and unconditional love for one another.

The bad news is that I didn’t like this show as much as I wanted to. The trailer looked fun and the cast is great — Noma Dumezweni specifically was phenomenal — but it didn’t quite hit for me. I felt like it couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a comedy or a drama; it wasn’t consistently funny enough to be comedic or deep enough to be dramatic. It wobbled on a line that kept taking me out of the show. When you have actors like Tamara Podemski and Noma Dumezweni (yeah I’m mentioning her again, she’s that great) acting their asses off, but then Anna Konkle popping in like she’s doing an SNL sketch, it feels disjointed. The early episodes felt like they were going to lean more into the comedy; they kept cutting to Murderbot’s favorite show, The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon, which has Clark Gregg, John Cho, DeWanda Wise, and Jack McBrayer looking and acting ridiculous in a Star Trek-esque parody soap opera, and if they had kept that tone throughout, it might have worked. OR if they had skipped the slapstick and kept only the light humor sprinkled in over deeper and darker material like the last few episodes, that might have worked, too. The combination didn’t quite do it for me. There was something about the writing that was juuuuust out of my reach, and I think it can be explained, at least partially, by the fact that the show is written, directed, and produced exclusively by men, despite its source material The Murderbot Diaries being written by a woman. (I’d be really curious to know how it compares in tone to Martha Wells’ book series.)

That said, there’s still plenty to like about this series besides the acting and the guest stars. For one thing, Murderbot — despite being a security unit who hacked his own self to be sentient — is very relatable. He hates making eye contact, thinks humans are weird and/or assholes, and prefers to spend his time watching his favorite television shows than interacting with others. He seems to have some aspects of depression and anxiety (though I think this could have been explored further), despite supposedly not being programmed to have feelings at all. One could argue he’s asexual and aromantic, because he says he skips over the romantic parts of his shows and shows contempt for the humans when they get frisky, but considering he is technically programmed to have no emotions and has Ken doll parts, I’m not sure I would classify him as aro/ace representation. Not only do I not think that was the show’s intention, I think it could venture too close to harmful and dehumanizing stereotypes to compare aro/ace humans to a literal robot. I’ll leave that to each individual aro/ace person to decide if they feel represented by him. That said, as a neurodivergent person who does see similarities in him to me (e.g. being unable to figure out small talk to save our lives), there’s something to be said for the metaphor of being literally built different. And again, if I thought the show was genuinely trying to go there, I would be more willing to engage with this potential interpretation further. Alas.

As for the LGBTQ+ aspects that WERE explored, the humans’ queerness is approached very matter-of-factly. It is space in the distant future, of course humans have evolved past stressing about the binaries of gender and sexuality most of our country currently believes exist. Every character’s queerness is revealed in subtle ways throughout the first few episodes with no fanfare, just as part of their lore drops as Murderbot learns about them. There’s even a (brief and largely unexplored) depiction of a healthy polyamorous relationship! (Well, attempts were made. The choices they made before entering into it were healthy, whether or not the relationship is, that’s up for debate.)

While it wasn’t exactly to my taste, had a bit of a predictable throughline, and didn’t quite match the quality of other shows Apple TV+ has been giving us recently, it’s only ten episodes at about 30 minutes each, so it’s not a very big time commitment. I think part of the issue I personally have is that my bar for realistic-looking humanoid AIs gaining sentience is the TV show Humans, and nothing will ever reach that standard. (Not even Westworld. There I said it. Though it admittedly came close.)

So, give Murderbot a shot and come back and let me know what you think! I’d love for you to tell me I must have been in a weird mood this week and actually it’s the best show ever. Or better yet, go watch it and come back and tell me all the ways you agree with me.

Murderbot is now streaming on Apple TV+.

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