Most of the robots are, well, pretty robotic. Though they look human, they behave like machines, functional and without surprise. But, of course, one very special robot is a bit different. He's Dorian, one of an earlier model of helper bots that was decommissioned because they were too human-like. They had emotions, like later TNG-era Data, I guess. What this means for the show, and for the actor Michael Ealy, is that Dorian is pretty much a regular person, and behaves as such. Maybe there's a synthetically smooth tone to his speech, but beyond that he's just like us. He gets mad, he can be offended. Sucks for his partner then, a gruff ace detective named John Kennex (futuristic name!), played by Karl Urban, who doesn't trust robots after one's cold practicality resulted in the death of a fellow police officer. So an emotional robot who stands up for himself is the last thing he needs. Or is it exactly what he needs?

By the end of the pilot episode, that question is answered pretty predictably, though the show is not without its mysteries elsewhere. John was in a coma for two years following a terribly botched raid in which his entire squad was killed, and now that he's awake and back on the force, he wants answers. Who tipped off the bad guys? And who are the bad guys? There's some sort of shadowy cabal of criminals frequently referred to, so I suppose investigating them will be the series' larger arc while individual episodes work on a more procedural level. Which is fine, I just wish the mystery didn't feel so generic and half-baked. There's nothing terribly compelling about this supposedly chaotic future; in fact, it doesn't even seem all that dangerous. So why should we take the time to care, when we are already inundated with so many knotty serial shows to keep up with?

I suppose if you're hungry enough for some science fiction, that might be reason enough to stick with the show. But beyond that, nothing about Almost Human grabbed me. The world is underdeveloped and the cast is bland. Beyond Ealy and Lili Taylor, as Kennex's superior, there's no one to really connect with. Urban rotely plays a character we've seen a million times, Minka Kelly fails to convince as a detective, and poor Mackenzie Crook, late of the original The Office and some marvelous stage work, is stuck playing yet another nerdy lab geek. It's a role that's as boringly formulaic as the rest of the show, at least what I've seen of it so far. When the robot is the most dynamic thing on screen, that might be a problem. Unless Almost Human livens up soon, it will only be a show that's almost worth watching.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.