Sci Fi on Sunday: The New Humans and the Returning Falling Skies

Tomorrow (June 28th) will be a busy TV day.  In addition to all the shows I outlined from last Sunday, AMC will be showing its new series Humans while the SyFy channel will broadcast the final season of Falling Skies. 

So what is Humans about? It is an alternate world where robot servants, or Synths, are about as hot as iPhones.  Starring William Hurt and Colin Morgan from Merlin, the series discusses the blurred line between human and machines.  And where do you draw the line?  This is an open question that seems to confuse and concern more and more of us in this technology controlled world of ours.  

Here is a quick trailer for the series.  It reminded me a little of the recent film Ex Machina, another scary story about human-like "robots" trying to integrate with our world.  And who can forget Steven Spielberg's AI with the factory-bought Haley Joel Osment or Will Smith in I, Robot?  I guess the list is pretty long, and we have even seen it in a few recent television shows, including Extant and Almost Human.  So it is not new territory, but another entry is always welcome.  

In a recent interview, Colin Morgan attempted to sum up the show:

Without being too clichéd about it, it is genuinely more about the humans and the effect of that on them. It covers every sector of society, the domestic setting with the family, another domestic setting with a retired gentleman, the scientific side of it, the police force, the youth, the workplace, it kind of covers everything in a really unexpected way and that’s what draws you in.

And if you want to see the damage wrought by alien occupiers versus man-made machines, you should watch TNT's Falling Skies.  Now in it final season, you can watch the Tom Mason, his family, and the 2nd Massachusetts Militia Regiment fight their last battles with the alien invaders who have decimated the planet and enslaved the children.  This is a very bleak story with plenty of false hopes along the way. In the final episode from last season, Tom Mason (Noah Wyle) was part of a bombing run targeting the moon when he was set adrift in space.  It seems he is coming back to Earth as one angry alien hunter.  This clip from the new season with Tom Mason holding an alien head is all you need to see. 

HUMANS is set in a parallel present, where the latest must-have gadget for any busy family is a Synth –- a highly-developed robotic servant, eerily similar to its live counterpart. In the hope of transforming the way his family lives, father Joe Hawkins (Tom Goodman-Hill) purchases a Synth (Gemma Chan) against the wishes of his wife (Katharine Parkinson), only to discover that sharing life with a machine has far-reaching and chilling consequences. Through four concurrent story lines, HUMANS explores the emotional impact that comes as the lines between people and machines become increasingly blurred. The series also stars William Hurt, Colin Morgan, Rebecca Front, and Neil Maskell.