The tense sci-fi drama returned with more cybernetic confluence conundrums in Humans Series 2 in late October 2016, picking back up where things left off with the runaway end to the debut series. Bringing back the same cast from the original, which aired from June 2015, it started out by ramping up the human synth tensions even further, asking if we were stupid enough to deliver true artificial intelligence to robots, how should we deal with the potential consequences.
It’s obviously a question that many sci-fi books, films and TV shows have tackled in the past with the likes of Terminator, Blade Runner and I Robot being a few of the most significant, so it was always going to be tough for Humans to find a new way of looking at the future tech debate. It did that pretty well with its simple suburban setup in the first series and the 2nd series sees it delving even deeper into the roller-coaster possibilities of human/robot relations.
Air date
The Series 2 premier had its air date on Sunday the 30th October 2016, with the rest of the seven remaining 60-minute episodes going out weekly on Channel 4 from then onwards. It arrived nearly a year and half after the first series kicked things off and it’ll be interesting to find out if transmission of the second batch of episodes spells the closing chapter on the sci-fi drama, or if it goes on to be a recurring series.
Story
The plot picks things up a few months after the events of Series 1 with Niska in hiding with the consciousness code, after she went rogue in the latter half of the opening eight episodes. The other conscious synths, Mia, Leo and Matt, have been left to find their own way, but with mounting tension and more reports of synths behaving unusually, their place in society continues to be threatened.
Joe and Laura are trying to work out their marriage differences after a tumultuous time of things in the first series with their suburban 2.4 family. However, the past doesn’t take too long to catch up with them and they’re thrown back into the spotlight of the conscious synths and their implication for society when Niska arrives on their doorstep.
Meanwhile, in the US a tech billionaire is attempting to progress his own AI research, recruiting the best minds from the industry to work on his project. One of his targets is the leading artificial intelligence expert, Dr Athena Morrow, but she suspects an ulterior motive on his part as she works on her own research into a new concept in machine consciousness.
Cast
The exceptional Katherine Parkinson (The IT Crowd Finale) returns as mum Laura and she’s joined once again by Tom Goodman-Hill as her husband Joe. Gemma Chan (Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them) will be back as Mia, along with Colin Morgan (Good Omens) as Leo, Emily Burlington (The Inbetweeners 2) and Ivanno Jeremiah as Max.
Newcomers confirmed for Humans Series 2 include Marshall Allman as the young billionaire, Milo Khoury, and Carrie-Anne Moss as Dr Athena Morrow.
Production
Kudos Productions is in charge of the filming of the show once again, in association with Matador Films. It’s written by the British writing duo of Sam Vincent and Jonathan Brackley, and as before it’s based on the Swedish sci-fi drama, Real Humans.
First impressions
With such a stand-out first series, we’re expecting Humans Series 2 to be one of the must-see sci-fi shows of the year, pushing the boundaries of what we’ve come to expect from British TV. Kudos have created a believable situation and credible delivery of the story and with such an impressive cast it’s hard to see this being anything other than a big hit. If you missed the first series, you should be able to catch up on 4OD in the run-up to air date in October.
