Follows a young computer programmer (Malek) who suffers from social anxiety disorder and forms connections through hacking. He's recruited by a mysterious anarchist, who calls himself Mr. Robot.
Creator: Sam Esmail
Stars: Rami Malek, Christian Slater, Portia Doubleday
Storyline
Elliot Alderson, a young cyber-security engineer living in New York who
assumes the role of a vigilante hacker by night. Elliot meets a
mysterious anarchist known as "Mr. Robot" who recruits Elliot to join
his team of hackers, "fsociety". Elliot, who has a social anxiety
disorder and connects to people by hacking them, is intrigued but
uncertain if he wants to be part of the group. The show follows Mr.
Robot's attempts to engage Elliot in his mission to destroy the
corporation Elliot is paid to protect. Compelled by his personal
beliefs, Elliot struggles to resist the chance to take down the
multinational CEOs that are running (and ruining) the world.
Reviews:
Going in with low
expectation, not knowing anything about this show, the pilot turned out
to offer a pleasant surprise. In short, the show is a bit
unconventional, like a mix between an audio book and a TV show, but one
rather well researched and executed.
The acting is fairly good, the narrative style felt novel and fresh, and there's ample room for various subplots and story lines. The setting also felt real, as others have pointed out. Some interesting creative decisions were made, such as blatantly spelling out the antagonist, a company, by giving it an unmistakable name. It also makes subtle jokes and pokes fun of things probably only people in the IT industry would recognize.
Whereas most shows and movies seem to throw all connection to reality straight out the window when it comes to IT related stuff, this show does not. In fact, it seems extraordinarily well researched for an entertainment piece. Being in that industry myself and having had a bit of "fun" as a youth, I'd have to say that overall the portrayal of IT security and hacking in this show is leaps and bounds more accurate than anything that has come before it, even if the attentive viewer would be able to spot some minute factual errors.
Perchance even entertainment execs have realized they can no longer get away with silly and unbelievable things like "magic picture enhance", nerdy super hackers who as through divine insight guess their targets passwords in 1-2 attempts, or with peddling notions of tools that have weeks of artist design effort spent on them, for buttons that once clicked, reveal some information that would logically be impossible to get hold of through the channel used.
It seems as though we finally have a show that doesn't treat its audience as idiots, and where the writers actually spent some time doing their homework. I'm just concerned that the show may be targeting too small an audience, an audience consisting of people who do not switch their brains off when they turn on the tele, and as such it may not be awarded a series contract.
So far, highly recommended to tune into if you're interested in seeing something fresh and aren't allergic to narration (getting inside the mind of a somewhat odd protagonist), as there's quite lot of the latter.
The acting is fairly good, the narrative style felt novel and fresh, and there's ample room for various subplots and story lines. The setting also felt real, as others have pointed out. Some interesting creative decisions were made, such as blatantly spelling out the antagonist, a company, by giving it an unmistakable name. It also makes subtle jokes and pokes fun of things probably only people in the IT industry would recognize.
Whereas most shows and movies seem to throw all connection to reality straight out the window when it comes to IT related stuff, this show does not. In fact, it seems extraordinarily well researched for an entertainment piece. Being in that industry myself and having had a bit of "fun" as a youth, I'd have to say that overall the portrayal of IT security and hacking in this show is leaps and bounds more accurate than anything that has come before it, even if the attentive viewer would be able to spot some minute factual errors.
Perchance even entertainment execs have realized they can no longer get away with silly and unbelievable things like "magic picture enhance", nerdy super hackers who as through divine insight guess their targets passwords in 1-2 attempts, or with peddling notions of tools that have weeks of artist design effort spent on them, for buttons that once clicked, reveal some information that would logically be impossible to get hold of through the channel used.
It seems as though we finally have a show that doesn't treat its audience as idiots, and where the writers actually spent some time doing their homework. I'm just concerned that the show may be targeting too small an audience, an audience consisting of people who do not switch their brains off when they turn on the tele, and as such it may not be awarded a series contract.
So far, highly recommended to tune into if you're interested in seeing something fresh and aren't allergic to narration (getting inside the mind of a somewhat odd protagonist), as there's quite lot of the latter.
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