'Humans' First Look: What If Everyone in the World Had a Human-Like Robot?

If you could own a human-like robot who would carry out the daily chores of life for you, would you? Would you allow it to live in your house and care for your children? Would you start to think of it as a member of your family? And would that relationship inevitably start to blur the lines between what is a human and what is a robot?

Those are among the questions at the center of AMC’s upcoming drama Humans (June 28, 9 p.m.), starring Oscar winner William Hurt as a citizen of a parallel present where Synths — human-like, artificially intelligent servants —are as common as TVs and cellphones.

Hurt’s George Millican is especially attached to his Synth, Odi, an out-of-date model who ties George to his past via shared memories of George’s late wife. Meanwhile, Hawkins family patriarch Joe buys a Synth to help get his home in order and give him some much-needed time to try to strengthen an increasingly tense relationship with his busy wife, Laura. But while most of the family quickly acclimates to the smoothly-running household that comes courtesy of Synth Anita, Laura quickly becomes unnerved by the very un-robotic attachment she sees Anita forming with her young daughter.

Anita, in fact, like a handful of other Synths viewers are introduced to in the series premiere, appears to be a lot more human than even the newest model of Synth, and her backstory, which will unfold throughout the eight-episode season, could impact how the actual humans ultimately feel about the millions of Synths already blurring the lines between man and machine.

Humans executive producer Derek Wax, the BAFTA winner who also produced The Hour, talks to Yahoo TV about the secrets of the Synths.

You very quickly into the series start to think about whose life is more robotic… the Synths or the humans.
It’s very interesting. We wanted to reflect them back at each other in a sense, as we see at times humans behaving almost robotically or behaving in certain ways… when Laura asks in the first episode, “Do we love our children because we have to or because we’re genetically programmed that way?” To what extent are our own emotions actually something which is programmed? We all feel we have free will and consciousness, but actually a lot of it comes from our genetic inheritance.

Similarly, as we go on with the series we see the sentient Synths being denied rights. There’s a moment in episode 4 where a woman has a Synth and she wants to take him to the theater, and Laura is the lawyer called in on that case. We realize that the woman is basically saying, “Why can’t my Synth have rights if he can think, if he can feel?”

We learn in the premiere that there are millions of Synths around the world. It’s clearly something that is just an accepted part of everyday life at this point. Will we get some backstory on how that came to be?
We do get some backstory. It’s drip-fed through the season because the assumption of the series is that these Synths have been around for a number of years. George worked on the original program. Odi, his Synth is part of the original D-series. We sort of figured that’s a bit like (the first version of Windows). We do give a sense of the backstory on David Elster. He’s sort of the Steve Jobs character… we’re not saying he’s like Steve Jobs, but in the sense of him being a sort of technical genius who was able to create things which everyone in the world wanted. In that sense there’s a similarity to him. We do get to see Elster in flashback as we begin to discover how the sentient Synths came to be. But we are very, very careful about the way that we drip feed that in… what we want to do is really hit the ground running and show this world that feels completely grounded and recognizable and ordinary, where a Synth is nothing exciting, just an ordinary fact of life. Synths are a bit like when the iPad was launched… some people will find it exciting, and for other people it just becomes another working tool. This is a must-have gadget, but there’s always the people who don’t want one and who feel they are not a force for good. So we explore that opposition… I think you’re weighing those two views all the way through the series.

And then we see with George that his Synth has become much more than all of that; he sees Odi as a son.
Yes, he does. And I think that’s very poignant, the way that’s written and played by William Hurt. Odi is sort of a son substitute. What is interesting about George is that he was once a brilliant scientist on the original Synth project. He used to work with the creator of the Synths and that’s why he’s got some technical ability in terms of mending Odi when he starts to glitch. But, he treats him more like a son than a piece of machinery… Odi is a like a vessel, a vehicle for accessing the most poignant emotional memories of George’s wife. So, something which is meant just to be for cleaning and doing very basic domestic chores actually gives George emotional access to the most important relationship in his life. I think it’s a wonderful thing that this decrepit Synth actually has all of those memories locked inside him. And in episode 2 we explore the severe Synth, Vera, who’s been provided by the National Health Service to look after George’s health, and she does so with far more energy and efficiency and mental thoroughness. But, of course, George doesn’t want that. He’s looking for the emotional connection.

And it’s an amusing story as well as quite a poignant one. This elderly man is becoming subjugated by the Synth who’s there just to tell him not to eat salt, taking his blood pressure all of the time. She is trying to care for him, but that’s not what he wants. He wants on occasion to just be able to eat a cheese sandwich. All of that is quite fun to explore.

Will we find out why certain Synths have become sentient?
It’s the way they were made. David Elster made five or six of them special. There’s a reason for it… but that [would be] sort of a spoiler. We do discover why he did it and why the group that we see walking through the forest (in the premiere) is a very, very special group. There is no one else like those people, and they are being hunted because of it.

What were the auditions like for the actors and actresses playing Synths? Were they very specific in terms of making sure they could do the sort of robotic movement and voices you wanted?  
It’s funny you should say “robotic,” because actually that was almost precisely the opposite of what we wanted them to do. We’ve seen lots of robot movies, everything from Terminator to RoboCop, and we wanted to create something different here, something original. We didn’t want them to have jerky movements, that sort of R2-D2 jerky thing at all. We wanted them to be… very graceful and elegant, with a great economy of movement. What they don’t have are superfluous hand gestures, the way that we all might wave our hands around or scratch our head or do something else while we’re talking. They would never ever do something that is not absolutely efficient and economical, because it’s all about conserving power for them.

We had a wonderful movement teacher, a choreographer called Dan O'Neil, who works for a company called Frantic Assembly and they’re quite famous in the U.K. They did all the movements for a show called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which is a very movement-based in a piece, and they created all the movement for that. Dan O'Neil, worked with us, was on set every day.

We know this first season is eight episodes. Is the story open-ended, so that it’s possible it could continue?
We’ve got some plans for a second season. There are lots of stories that are still to be told about these characters. There’s lots of potential in this world for new storylines.

Humans premieres June 28 at 9 p.m. on AMC.