The effect of this adaptation, in contrast, seems to be reassurance: that we, unlike the pathetic saps of the future, have the freedom to marry, have kids, feel sad and not attend orgies if we don’t want to. Huxley wrote Brave New World to warn readers of technology-assisted totalitarian control. (So why aren’t the group-sex scenes remotely sexy?)Īlso endlessly distracting, but in the good way: the sleek, futuristic production design by David Lee, which makes New London look like a kind of exclusive, ostentatiously eco-friendly airport only millionaires would be allowed to set foot in, and the corresponding costume designs by Susie Coulthard that are part-sticky sexbot, part-Eileen Fisher’s 2050 spring collection.
But unbeknownst to him, New London is already crumbling from the inside - with a disgruntled Epsilon named CJack60 (Joseph Morgan) ready to fight, leaders (Nina Sosanya, Ed Stoppard) too afraid to confront its problems head-on and party (i.e., orgy) designer Helm (Hannah John-Kamen) providing endless distraction for the masses. If there’s one believable thing about the show’s characterizations, it’s John’s conflicting desires to take advantage of his unexpected privileged position and to do away with New London’s cruel class system. John eventually ends up in New London, which he has a stronger connection to than his humble existence in the Savage Lands would suggest. The few times they do approach humanity, it simply feels like a narrative contrivance. That’s the thing about New London - its practices are so extreme, their ramifications so unexplored and thus their resonance to our world so limited that anyone who lives there is too outlandish to care about. Everyone is young and hot, and when they reach a certain age, they’re sent to the crematorium - not that the show dares to consider the darkness of that premise. Bernard’s superior (Sen Mitsuji) gives him a performance review while the employee is on the toilet. No one has ever cried before or knows what “a virginity” is. Too much of Brave New World is the writers delighting in shocking the audience with how strange New London’s customs are. And in a world where there’s both constant rutting and constant displays of power by the Alphas against those below them, it feels flat-out improbable that, say, the worst thing that might happen to a lower-ranking woman is that she wouldn’t orgasm during a sexual encounter.
In contrast, a scene in which a character doesn’t understand what blood is strains credulity - surely even in a designed-to-death utopia like this one, a child has tripped and skinned their knee before. The ubiquitous clicking noise of pearl-clutching New Londoners reacting to small incivilities is one of the few ways that the writers seem to have thought through what it feels like to live in this society. Those spherical, translucent pills - in yellow, orange and red, signifying different levels of intensity - dot New London, but each resident also carries around their own metallic Pez dispenser. It’s the last one that grabs her most: New Londoners pop feel-good pills at the slightest discomfort. But when the two visit the Savage Lands, where he hopes to woo her, she meets someone more intriguing: John the Savage ( Alden Ehrenreich, Solo: A Star Wars Story), who has experience with all kinds of things foreign to her, like music with lyrics, a mother (Demi Moore), and hours upon hours of moping. As an Alpha-Plus, Bernard Marx (Harry Lloyd, Counterpart) is at the top of the heap, but his task of indoctrinating all those below him to believe that everyone is happy in New London is hampered by his own deep unhappiness.īernard is smitten with Lenina Crowne ( Jessica Brown Findlay, Downton Abbey), the Beta-plus whose aforementioned moments of intimacy he threw back in her face. Each person in New London is genetically modified, then trained from childhood, to conform to one of five strictly hierarchical castes. As in any dystopia onscreen - and Brave New World is plotted as rotely as any of them - the characters we follow are the square pegs.
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