Android brings humanity to buddy-cop role
Almost Human, a futuristic new sci-fi series aimed at a mainstream audience, is set in Los Angeles in 2048, and it opens with a portentous warning of things to come.
“The future is com,” viewers are told, in a title crawl with voice-over. “Science and technology evolve at an uncontrollable pace. Unknown drugs and weapons flood out streets and schools.”
Drugs and weapons are controlled by violent, faceless criminal organizations, and the crime rate jumps fourfold in just a few decades.
Then comes the kicker, and it’s frightfully silly: “Outnumbered and overwhelmed, law enforcement implements a new strategy: Every police officer is partnered with an advanced combat-model android.”
Almost Human is a buddy cop show, in other words, in which one partner is human and the other is … well, you catch the drift.
The reason to watch, then, is the acting. Karl Urban plays John Kennex, an emotionally fragile police detective haunted by memories of a police ambush he was lucky to survive, and he’s ideally suited to the part.
As good as Urban is as the human cop, it’s Michael Ealy who steals the show as Kennex’s “almost human” partner, Dorian.
Programming note: In typical network tradition, Almost Human premieres Sunday, then moves to its regular day and time on Monday.
Got that? Good. Now on with the show. (Sunday, Global, Fox, 8 p.m. ET)
■ Not so long ago, a one-man Broadway stage show starring former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson would have seemed unthinkable, or implausible at the very least. And yet …
Not only is Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth an actual stage show featuring the original Iron Mike — a.k.a. Kid Dynamite, a.k.a. The Baddest Man on the Planet — but filmmaker Spike Lee has directed the inevitable HBO broadcast special, which premieres Saturday in the U.S. and Canada.
Undisputed Truth finds Tyson reflecting on life’s curves, punches thrown and punches received, with attimes disarming candour.
Perhaps its Lee’s influence, or perhaps it’s just the maturity that comes with age — Tyson is 47 — but the former WBC, WBA and IBF titleholder seems willing to come to terms in Undisputed Truth, in the most public way possible, with the darker moments in his life.
That includes his three-year prison term for rape in the mid 1990s, his filing for bankruptcy in 2003 after a succession of financial troubles, his subsequent public admission that his life had been a waste, and his lifelong bout with alcoholism.
Tyson knows how to work the crowd, and Undisputed Truth shows him as a born performer who understands rhythm and cadence, who knows when to lay it on and when to dial back.
Standing alone, under a spotlight, he has an almost magnetic stage presence as he delivers a story that’s grim and uplifting by turns. No one ever doubted Tyson’s charisma, or his candour, and the result is a performance that’s both revealing and riveting.
(Saturday, HBO, 8 p.m. ET)