Writer and director Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Annihilation) brings his brand of heady sci-fi to television in the form of Devs, a joint production between FX and Hulu. As an intimate exploration of the human condition framed by macro science fiction, Devs keeps Garland’s signature style intact in a serialized and thrilling way. Three episodes watched for review, minor spoilers ahead…

A young coder conducts a Turing test on the world’s most sophisticated android. A guilt-wracked biologist ventures into the heart of a mysterious cosmic anomaly. Writer and director Alex Garland loves to play in the sandbox of macro science fiction; a novelist turned filmmaker, his last two directorial efforts - 2014’s Ex Machina and 2018’s Annihilation - have tackled big ideas such as artificial intelligence, the singularity, and alien mutation. And while Garland excels at exploring large-scale concepts and reality-shattering sci-fi, he rarely leaves behind the most crucial aspect of effective storytelling: the human quotient. Where Ex Machina explored the birth of true artificial intelligence, it also served as a thoughtful examination of free will, control, and individuality; where Annihilation dared to venture into the reaches of the cosmic unknown, it also grappled with human nature’s gravitation towards self-destruction. His new show Devs, premiering on Hulu and in association with FX Networks, is no different - a fascinating look at a mysterious tech company and its super-secretive quantum mechanics project, the series combines brainy sci-fi with some very uncomfortable truths about the human condition.

Devs centers around Lily Chan (Sonoya Mizuno, Ex Machina, Maniac), a computer engineer for Silicon Valley tech giant Amaya. Run by the enigmatic Forest (Nick Offerman, tapping into equal parts menace and charisma), Amaya functions like Google on steroids - its many divisions serve as digits in every figurative pie of tech capitalism, while its steely-eyed head of security Kenton (Zach Grenier) lords over the campus, keeping a particularly tight lid on the company’s prized and secretive Devs program. When Lily’s boyfriend Sergei (Karl Glusman), who also works at Amaya, impresses Forest and is inducted into the Devs program, Lily is happy for him. However, her elation is short-lived: On his first day at Devs, Sergei discovers the true, earth-shattering nature of the program, and goes missing soon after. As Lily struggles to uncover the truth behind Sergei’s disappearance, she’s brought face to face with cutting edge quantum mechanics, existential revelations, and the murky depths of corporate espionage.