ARTIFICIAL LOVE
Can STEVE BUSCEMI save a beautiful dying android in the latest Electric dreams adventure?
IF YOU ENJOY Channel 4’s android drama Humans, then you won’t want to miss this week’s episode of sci-fi anthology Electric Dreams – inspired by Philip K. Dick’s short stories – set in the near future.
In Crazy Diamond, Steve Buscemi stars as Ed Norris, a hardworking, Pink Floyd-loving employee at a high-tech facility called the Spirit Mill, which produces a particular type of synthetic being.
Known as Jacks and Jills, the droids are made of flesh and blood, but they’re also programmed to live just a short amount of time.
So when married man Ed meets beautiful life insurance saleswoman Jill (Sidse Babett Knudsen), whose expiration date is fast approaching, will he use his position at the Spirit Mill to help her gain a new ‘quantum consciousness’ – or QC – and give her a new life?
A LIFE UNFULFILLED
‘Ed is seemingly happy, or at least content,’ says
Buscemi, 59, whose credits include
Boardwalk Empire.
‘He’s got a good job, and he’s married and truly loves his wife
Sally [Julia Davis].
But he’s also got this other side to him that yearns for a time he’s only read about. He’s obsessed with the 1970s, especially the music.
‘There’s something in him that is unfulfilled. Maybe he doesn’t know what it is until he meets Jill. But she wants to keep living and the only way to do that is to be re-implanted with a QC, which gives the Jacks and Jills their spark, or soul.’
When Jill urges him to steal the QCS, Ed realises that if he sold them illegally, he could make enough money to fund his dream of sailing away in his precious boat with his wife. But is Ed falling for Jill? ‘These synthetic beings are very lifelike. They have a consciousness, emotions and are self-aware, which Ed finds really interesting,’ explains Buscemi. ‘He’s under Jill’s spell and wants to be with her, plus he’s not as connected to Sally as he wants to be.
‘Ed also fancies himself as an adventurer, but that’s discouraged in the world he lives in. You have to play by the rules. In fact, it’s quite controlled – what you eat, how much you eat. People think they have freedom, but they really don’t. There is a sense of foreboding.’
HEADING FOR DISASTER?
Meanwhile, Ed is unaware that Sally is confiding in her new friend Su (Joanna Scanlan), who is part-human, part-pig. But as more people get wind of his plan, how far-reaching and disastrous will the consequences be?
‘I think Ed is a good guy, but he’s conflicted and caught between two worlds,’ says Buscemi.
Inspired by the 1954 story Sales Pitch, the drama deals with Philip K. Dick’s familiar themes of what makes us human and how we can replicate it, but Buscemi was more drawn to his character, Ed.
‘As an actor I try not to look for themes because it distracts me,’ he says.‘i was more concerned with how my character fitted into this world, and while Crazy Diamond is futuristic and makes comments about society, it’s really a character piece and that’s what I look for.
‘The cast, including Julia and Sidse, are incredible, too. It’s been a real ensemble,’ he adds. ‘I always feel like I’m only as good as the actors I’m working with, and they’re all terrific.’