Westworld Review

Is HBO’s Westworld Really The New Game Of Thrones? Here's Our Review

What's it about?

HBO’s eagerly-awaited sci-fi drama is set in a cowboy-themed holiday resort which uses futuristic robo-tech to give its clients everything they desire – be it sex, hard liquor, action, adventure or violence.

As Thandie Newton’s kickass brothel madam character puts it during the launch episode: “We gratify rich assholes who want to play cowboy.” Or as one of her punters adds: “This place is f***ing wild.”

However, when the uncannily life-like androids develop sentience and start to run amok, the resort’s human guests find themselves in mortal danger – and, equally disconcertingly, unsure what and who is real.

The show’s credentials are pretty darned impeccable: it’s co-created by Jonathan Nolan (who wrote the Dark Knight trilogy and Interstellar for brother Christopher), exec-produced by J.J. Abrams (of Star Wars/Star Trek pedigree), based on novelist Michael Crichton’s cult 1973 film, and boasts an A-list cast led by Sir Anthony Hopkins. So after a sneak peek at the debut episode, does Westworld justify the hype?

What’s good about it?

Luckily, quite a lot. It was a coup to cast Hopkins in his first ever regular TV role and he doesn’t disappoint as visionary inventor Dr Robert Ford. Hopkins shares “grizzled veteran” top billing with Ed Harris, who plays gun-slinging villain The Man In Black – the role made famous by Yul Brynner in the original film.

Love interest comes from the relationship between Evan Rachel Wood as a robotic rancher’s daughter and James Marsden as an enigmatic cowboy. Jeffrey Wright is typically terrific as the head of android programming and Borgen star Sidse Babett Knudsen is ace as the park’s ice-cool ops leader. Luke “big bro of Liam and Chris” Hemsworth is the hardman head of security.

There’s violence: not just shootouts but slit throats and scalpings. There’s also sex, courtesy of androids, prostitutes and android prostitutes wandering around with their Wild West kit off.

Ambitious in scale, Westworld’s mega-budget is right there on the screen. It looks amazing, from the sweeping canyon scenery to the realistic frontier town, from impressive robotics labs to eerie warehouses full of androids.

There are lovely visual flourishes, like flies crawling over unblinking eyeballs, milk spurting out of a thirsty bandit’s bullet wounds and androids zipping themselves into body bags to go into sleep mode. A tastefully curated soundtrack includes the Rolling Stones and Johnny Cash.

It’s also not afraid to be complex and philosophical, tackling some big ol’ meaty themes: the nature of consciousness, the sinister side of tech and mankind’s murky morality. The blurb calls it "a dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness and the future of sin”.

We dubbed it “Deadwood meets Ex Machina” way back in our 2016 TV preview and having now seen it, we’d stand by that description – with healthy doses of The Terminator, The Truman Show and Channel 4 hit Humans stirred in.

HBO

What's not so good about it?

There’s a slight air of taking-itself-too-seriously pomposity and some of the dialogue is stiffly cod-scientific. Such a concept risks being all gloss and no heart. Hints at a wider conspiracy could be hokum.

Simon Quarterman is also deeply irritating as as the park’s “narrative director” – a shouty, sweary Scot doing a dodgy impression of Malcolm Tucker from The Thick of it. Let’s hope he gets killed off early on.

HBO

Is it really the next Game Of Thrones?

Well, it costs nearly as much: the debut season has a whopping budget of £4.5m per episode, putting it in the same megabucks bracket as its dragon-studded HBO stablemate. With only two seasons of GoT left to go, HBO does seem to be lining up Westworld as the fantasy epic's replacement.

Word is it’s been mapped out to run across six seasons, so it has the sweeping scale of George RR Martin’s saga and should avoid the whole “making it up as they go along” vibe of ultimately disappointing series like Lost.

Other things it has in common with Game of Thrones: an arty graphic title sequence, a similarly classy score (composer Ramin Djawadi works on both shows) and a large ensemble cast – plus, of course, lashings of violence and nudity.

However, this is a very different beast to GoT. Futuristic sci-fi as opposed to period fantasy. It could be equally cool and culty, but looks unlikely to draw such a broad audience.

HBO

When can I see for myself?

The ten-part series arrives on Sky Atlantic in October. Yee and indeed hah.