OCTOBER 6, 2016
Being an Emmy voter (please, please hold your applause), I have screened a lot of pilots in my time, but the first episode of HBO’s “Westworld” is one of the most challenging TV shows that I’ve seen in years. I was a fan of the 1973 feature film — it was goofy fun seeing Richard Benjamin (who was a big star at the time) face off against robot gunslinger Yul Brynner in a fabricated Western town designed for tourists to play cowboy for a week.
HBO’s sci-fi take on “Westworld” is very different and much, much deeper than the feature film. No wonder with executive producers like J.J. Abrams, Jonathan Nolan and the late Jerry Weintraub on the case.
We’ve got three levels going on here. The first involves the overseers headed by Dr. Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins — take it in people, Anthony Hopkins as a regular on an American TV series, for God’s sake!) and his associate Bernard Lowe (the brilliant Jeffrey Wright). They have created the new edition of the theme park, at times noting the troubles that the park had previously had (coyly referencing the events of the 1973 movie).
The second level are the A.I. creatures, or robots, who are primarily represented by Dolores (the wonderful Evan Rachel Wood) as a saloon girl under the guidance of a madam (Thandie Newton) who is no-nonsense. Dolores has had a previous relationship with Teddy (James Marsden), a gunslinger who apparently is a guest and has come back to woo his love, even though she is a robot.
On the third level are the guests who pay a substantial amount of money to spend a week in this Western town. “Westworld” poses this interesting question — what if you had the chance to experience the feeling of what it’s like to kill someone without any consequence at all? Or the experience of being enough in control to torture someone? Or even to experience what it’s like to rape someone, knowing that the victim involved is just a robot who has no feeling? I suspect that most of us would initially say, “No, no, I would never do that.” But honestly, wouldn’t you be the least bit curious? It’s a very deep question that “Westworld” poses, one that I’ve never quite seen in any other art form.
As faithful readers of this blog may have noticed, I rarely review television series here (though that’s my beat elsewhere), because it’s difficult to judge a TV show just by its first episode. I only do so if I feel the show is important, as I last did with “The People vs. O.J. Simpson,” which turned out to be terrific television.
The “Westworld” pilot is mostly about establishing the characters and plot, not necessarily dazzling us with big performances. But when you assemble a cast with such heavyweight acting talent as Hopkins, Wright, Wood, Marsden and Newton, big performances are likely to come farther down the line. Add to that Ed Harris (Ed Harris on a TV series, people!) as The Man In Black, a former guest who is about to avenge some wrongs, and the terrific actor Rodrigo Santoro as Hector, the town’s legendary leather-clad bad guy, who is rumored to be hot-and-heavy with Newton’s madam in episodes to come.
The original “Westworld” was created by the late Michael Chichton, who later adapted the creatures running amok in the theme park idea of “Westworld” to create the classic “Jurassic Park.” But the HBO “Westworld” brings even more gravitas to the concept.
If you have access to HBO, they’re running the pilot episode all weekend. And Episode #2 will air on Sunday at 9pm EDT. I would urge you to give them a try.
For years, HBO has been looking for a series that would take over from “Game of Thrones,” which can’t last forever. In “Westworld,” I think they may have found it.
I rarely rarely do this but…. GRADE: A
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