Across four short series, USA Network’s Mr Robot guided viewers through a labyrinthine science-fiction thriller the likes of which the world had never seen - only few people ever watched it, and more's the shame.
Part-satire, part-techno noir, Mr Robot starred then-nobody Rami Malek as Elliott, a lonely computer hacker with a backpack full of secrets. Malek has subsequently gone on to win an Academy Award for his portrayal of Freddie Mercury in the largely dire Bohemian Rhapsody, and will soon cement his fame with a turn as villain Safin in No Time To Die, the 25th instalment in the James Bond franchise, but back in 2015 – when Mr Robot started – he was a nobody, and this was only appropriate considering the part he was playing.
Indeed, one of the most interesting things about Mr Robot was the way in which the series toyed with alternate history; the technical term for this in sci-fi is ‘speculative fiction’ – novels, films and TV shows that ask, “What if..?”
A common example in the genre is the, “What is the Nazis won World War 2?” genre – the likes of Robert Harris’ Fatherland, Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, and so on. In Mr Robot’s case, the question was, “What if the Occupy Wallstreet movement managed to succeed?”
A tantalizing premise which, combined with a pulsing 80s soundtrack, impeccable production design, and a heck of a lot of very fancy technical film-making, created a genuinely exhilarating televisual experience.
Underpinning the show’s definite, right-to-the-gut punch was the sense in which we all feel somewhat victimised by the largely computer-operated system that we are all forced to be part of. It is inevitable for everyone who is a member of the 21st century economy. And it might be easy to forget the sense of rage and inertia so many felt in the mid-2010s ensuant from the 2008 financial crisis. It was that anger and the subsequent political gridlock that has given way to Brexit, Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán and all the rest.
It was hugely appealing then that in 2015 showrunner Sam Esmail created a kind of superhero, in the form of Elliott who, could bring down the entire global financial system; more power to him, you might think.
Indeed, this was the plot of the very first series of the programme, which was also the most watched – only what the show did next was even more interesting: through series two, three and four it followed the implications of that victory through to its logical conclusions, arguing that while revolutions might look superficially wonderful they tend to cause more problems than they solve.
No accident, perhaps, that Esmail and Malek are both Egyptian, and it is easy to recognise parallels to the chaos let loose by the Arab Spring in the fictional America they painted from episode to episode.
Centrally though, the sense of panicked, system-breaking anti-heroism was perfectly embodied in Malek’s Elliott – a young man who was, in some senses, an ‘Incel’ before the term was coined. Socially awkward, mentally ill, addicted to painkillers, wearing only a Zuckerberg-style uniform of jeans and black hoodie, the temptation may have been to see Elliott as a kind of postmodern Übermensch – much like Neo in The Matrix, or even Fight Club’s anonymous Narrator.
The twist in the tail however was that Elliott’s facade was slowly peeled back, revealing a person who was not so heroic after all, with his cunning and rage ultimately motivated by naivety, envy and trauma. Thankfully, the series did not stop once this undressing had been completed however, and more than anything the series was about how to heal from trauma – whether that be economic, societal or deeply personal.
That is not to say that the series was all about Elliott either, although his unreliable narration and storyline makes up the spine of the programme. Rounding out the core cast was Carly Chaikin playing Darlene, Elliott’s fellow hacker and equally troubled younger sister, Portia Doubleday as Angela Moss, Elliott’s best friend and love interest, and Christian Slater as the titular and mysterious Mr Robot.
Beyond them, with each of those characters having a rich and interesting narrative of their own, came a broader cast of other absolute gems, including those played by the extraordinary BD Wong, brilliant Michael Christofer, wonderful Martin Wallstrom, tremendous Grace Gummer (daughter of Meryl Streep), and others. And each narrative had a proper ending - the whole thing worked.
To discuss who all of these people play would be to spoil Mr Robot’s storyline of course, and that would be a crying shame; the key things to know are that series 1 is a blast, series 2 is a little sombre but still very good, series 3 is better than the first, and series 4 is the best of the lot.
This trajectory alone makes the show remarkable, as it puts Mr Robot into esteemed company alongside Breaking Bad, The Wire, and The Sopranos by ending even more strongly than it began.
What perhaps prevented the show crossing over into the mainstream in the ways those series did was, firstly, its computery-ness; the show took pride in being accurate in relation to how its technology functioned, and although this was no barrier to me – and I am hardly a computer whizz-kid – if you don’t understand computers at all then it might have proved a bit much. The brilliant Halt and Catch Fire fell foul of the same issues, and was all-but-equally fantastic.
Secondly, the series did rather rely on a sense of misanthropy at the outset, and this might have been a turn-off. Its main characters ran a hacker collective called ‘fsociety’ and operated out of a disused amusement park, almost like Batman villains, dressing moodily with punkish touches that felt very 2008 and possibly not particularly 2015 (or, indeed, 2020). Seen as a period, perhaps even sci-fi series however, and one about lonely outcasts, this is a tiny barrier to entry over which it is easy to hop.
The biggest factor in Mr Robot’s obscurity however was the show’s distribution, which was disastrous; watching it in the UK required you to buy each episode on Amazon Prime, and it is still not available on any other streaming services. Overseas it had the same problem, and while its re-release on Netflix ultimately made Breaking Bad, the advent of the DVD boxset made The Wire, and the ubiquity of HBO in the early 2000s made The Sopranos, nothing much has made Mr Robot – apart, perhaps, from internet piracy, which the show embraced from the get-go but which hardly helped it reach mainstream viewers.
Thankfully, on March 31 the whole of Mr Robot will finally become available on DVD boxset, and that that point I sincerely hope the show enjoys a second life; it is, for my money, the best TV series of recent years, and if you missed it when it was airing then I highly recommend making the time to watch it.
Few programmes have dared to be so political, and fewer still have spent more time looking at how to solve problems rather than how to raze them to the ground.
For that, if nothing else, Mr Robot deserves not just praise but full-throated celebration.
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