Image: Steve Schofield / USA Network
A quick look at the trailer for Peacock’s Brave New World will reveal little you haven’t seen before, though there’s enough to drum up some fascination. But despite a promising premise and some genuinely enjoyable if bizarre episodes, Brave New World cannot save itself from convention any more than the characters in its homogenous universe can.
Brave New World sets up all the perils we’ve come to expect of futuristic stories — societal disruption, invasive technology, loss of humanity — but it departs from Huxley’s novel in the least creative ways, opting to flex flashy visuals and choreographed orgies instead of playing to the strengths of its source material. For a show that looks to be part Westworld, part Cloud Atlas, Brave New World is at its best when it’s neither, yet rarely gives itself that chance.
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Based on the novel by Aldous Huxley and adapted by David Weiner, Brave New World takes place in a future where some of the world looks like our own, but a new society blooms in a bubble known as New London. Here, everyone lives free of emotion, monogamy, and privacy, and is classified by a Greek letter indicating their standing — Alphas at the top, Epsilons at the bottom. They pop colorful pills to modulate their feelings and attend nightly orgies because “everyone belongs to everyone else.”
Brave New World cannot save itself from convention any more than the characters in its homogenous universe can.
Predictably, there are characters who feel amiss in this would-be utopia. Bernard (Harry Lloyd) and Lenina (Jessica Brown Findlay) share a growing unrest that leads them out of New London and into the “Savagelands.” After a violent attack, they flee back home with the savage John (Alden Ehrenreich), who rejects everything about New London’s social strata and medically-induced emotional numbing (he does not reject the orgies). His arrival, initially a source of entertainment and excitement for those he calls foreigners, poses an inevitable threat to the very fabric of their lives.
It’s hard not to notice immediately that all of Brave New World‘s leads are white. In fact, a quick look at the entire slate of launch-day Peacock originals will reveal overwhelmingly Caucasian casting. Nick Mohammed’s Intelligence comes closest to a lead character of color but still orbits a cringey white male, and though Brave New World has prominent Black secondary characters, it often doesn’t know what to do with them.
Hannah John-Kamen gets the most out of her role as Helm, a powerful figure in New London society (“We’re going to fuck” she declares with relish upon meeting John for the first time). Nina Sosanya and Kylie Bunbury also log excellent performances, but they fit clunkily at best into the show at large – which seems particularly insulting when you remember that Bunbury carried a whole show which only recently became available to stream.
John, a “savage,” shares a bench with Cjack, an “Epsilon.” Neither of them quite fit into New London society in Peacock’s “Brave New World.”
Image: Steve Schofield / Peacock
When the class warfare does reach a boiling point, or whenever that foreshadowing comes up in previous episodes, the show grows disjointed. It becomes the kind of thing you can play in the background while absentmindedly picking up your phone to scroll. But when Bernard takes John to parties to tell the same story over and over, when John wins over New Londoners with simple human charisma and proceeds to bed them all, it’s a whole different show.
The actors clearly benefit from this genre shift as well. Ehrenreich has commanded the cross-section of charm and awkwardness since Hail, Caesar!, and while Lloyd is certainly adept at inhabiting a petulant man whose power is threatened, he’s infinitely more engaging while flexing his comedy chops, throwing bad punches or struggling to understand dating.
Sadly, beyond those genre departures that seem like, let’s be honest, products of inconsistent tone in the show’s writing and direction, Brave New World doesn’t offer much. The uprising happens, the love triangle, um…triangulates, and residents of New London must confront their flawed system. By the ninth and final episode of the season, it’s pure dystopic formula without any of the earlier surprise. You won’t feel any need to return to New London.
Brave New World is now streaming on Peacock.
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