No one would blame you for being confused. A new series turned up Wednesday on the USA Network called “Mr. Robot” that is about humans. And on Sunday, AMC will unveil a series called “Humans” that is largely about robots. But if you can’t keep them straight, watch both. “Mr. Robot” is pretty darn good. “Humans” is too.
Robots are right up there with space travel on the list of things that infiltrated television and film much more quickly than they have become factors in everyday life. Rosie the Robot of “The Jetsons” will be eligible for android Social Security soon. But “Humans,” a British product based on a Swedish series, feels fresh nonetheless, thanks to a multiple-plotline approach, a deft cast and its refusal to be simplistic.
Robots — “synthetics,” or “synths,” in the show’s terminology — have become routine accessories in the world of “Humans,” and as the series opens, the Hawkins family purchases its first one, an attractive female it names Anita (Gemma Chan). It’s actually the father, Joe Hawkins (Tom Goodman-Hill), who makes the purchase. The mother, Laura (Katherine Parkinson), has been resistant, and she isn’t happy to see Anita in the household when she returns from one of her frequent work trips.
“I don’t want one around the kids, Joe,” she complains, adding: “It’s not right. It’ll mess with their heads.”
William Hurt as an aging scientist and Rebecca Front as his government-issue eldercare-bot in “Humans.”

DES WILLIE, KUDOS / AMC-C4
Her reservations turn out to be well founded. Anita soon begins behaving in ways synths are not supposed to behave, and she has some sort of fixation on the family’s youngest child.A satisfying series could probably have been made just out of the dynamics of the Hawkins family, Anita’s arrival underscoring Laura’s insecurities and tensions in the marriage. But that microcosm is only the beginning of “Humans.”
We soon learn that Anita was part of a small group of synths before somehow achieving an enhanced level of self-awareness and going rogue. A renegade named Leo (Colin Morgan) leads that group, which also includes a synth prostitute, Niska (Emily Berrington). Anita and Leo were an item early in their outlaw life, but after she was captured, given a memory wipe and sold to the Hawkinses, it’s unclear how much she remembers of her previous existence.
The best plotline in the show, though, might be the one involving George Millican, an aging scientist beautifully played by William Hurt. He was involved in creating synths originally, but by the time we meet him he has become something of a hermit. He is clinging to Odi (Will Tudor), a badly outdated first-generation synth whom George values for his memory repository, including details involving George’s now dead wife. It’s a touching relationship, one threatened by the arrival of Vera (Rebecca Front), a newer-model synth forced on George by the government, and in some ways the scariest character in this show.
We know from countless past TV series, films and novels that when artificial intelligence is created, it will always, always, always gain sentience and turn against us. But what’s terrifying about Vera is not that she may have gone militant; it’s that she might merely be doing her job. She’s apparently an eldercare-bot, and in the name of watching out for George’s health she does things like override his requests for particular meals.
We are, we keep being told, right on the verge of having robots become omnipresent in our lives. “Humans” invites us to contemplate the consequences of that, and look beyond the obvious problem of what happens when the robots achieve independence of thought (which, it bears repeating, they always, always, always do). One of the show’s themes is how ceding our roles and choices to machines threatens us. What happens to motherhood when a robot can read a bedtime story to a child more entertainingly than Mom can, a reality Laura confronts? What happens to aging with dignity when an eldercare robot bosses you around as if you were a child? And let’s not even get into how difficult it will be to make corrections once robots swarm our lives. It takes us years just to recall faulty airbags; imagine the obstacles to retreating from the robotic future if, 10 or 20 years into it, we decide we don’t like the repercussions.
Anyway, there’s a lot going on in this show, which is being billed as an eight-episode series. Some of it is familiar from previous takes on artificial life, some of it is innovative, but all of it is involving, well written and well played. And though this is a drama, it is also served up with dashes of humor.
“Inappropriate physical contact between myself and secondary users must be reported to a primary user,” Anita calmly advises Toby Hawkins, the son in the family, as he tries to satisfy his, um, adolescent curiosity by grabbing her breast. “Primary user” equals parent. Sorry, Toby.