Warning: Contains spoilers for Mr Robot season two, up to episode seven
A mid-season plot twist in hacking drama Mr Robot has annoyed some critics, but as news that the series is to be renewed for a third season, here's why it's worth tuning in.
Last year, Sam Esmail's anti-corporate thriller, which airs on Amazon in the UK, became a hit for the normally upbeat US network NBC by tapping into our insecurities about the internet age. The show follows Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek), a cybersecurity engineer by day and hacker by night who also suffers from a social anxiety disorder and depression.
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The first season saw him recruited by anarchist Mr Robot (Christian Slater) into a group of hacktivists known as FSociety, who are trying to erase consumer debt by attacking the data held by finance corporation E Corp. Series two has set an even darker tone as Elliot tries to deal with his mental health issues and the fallout of his activities with the group.
Mr Robot first won praise for Esmail's daring, shape-shifting plot and Malek's soulful performances and since then it has been on a roll.
This week, producers at USA Network announced they were renewing the series for a third season, reports Deadline Hollywood. They said the show "continued to break new ground and open up new opportunities for the network". Deadline points out that even though the series has had modest overall ratings, it "has become a prestige series and a calling card for an edgier, younger-skewing USA brand".
But while many fans and critics have praised the show, they also find it maddening - and the exasperation continues this season.
Vulture critic Matt Zoller Seitz diagnoses Mr Robot as "Cinema de Dudebro", in the tradition of Taxi Driver, American Psycho and The Matrix, the complete works of Stanley Kubrick and David Fincher. But while the show masters the fanboy pastiche with its clever reveals, this is also the "bug" in its program, which stops it being great.
The latest reveal took way too long, says Abraham Riesman, also in Vulture. From the very first episode of the "sometimes delightful, sometimes plodding second season", we were sure Elliot wasn't actually staying at his mum's house but rather locked away in an institution somewhere. And finally that's confirmed - except it's a prison, not a psych ward.
But instead of feeling satisfied, says Riesman, it was more of a "Jesus, can we finally move on now? moment". It's not the first time the series has pulled this sort of delayed-gratification unveiling, he adds: last year, "it took nearly the entire season to unveil the fact that Mr Robot was a hallucination in the image of Elliot's father".
Emily Nussbaum in the New Yorker agrees that "the show's most maddening quality" is "the way that it sometimes felt as if it cut through the world's bullshit - and then sometimes offers up its own brand as a replacement". And yes, she says, the problem continues this season, which "alternates between sequences of masterly beauty" and "one too many deep talks between Elliott and his friends".
Mr Robot may be "exhausting" and "self-serious" at times, adds the critic, but it's also a rarity on TV that captures a modern mood and for all its flaws, "it feels like an alarm going off".
Mr Robot is available on Amazon UK, with a new episode every Thursday.
Mr Robot: 'best hacking show yet' coming to Amazon UK
25 September 2015
The critically acclaimed US cyber thriller Mr Robot is set to come to the UK next month via the online streaming service Amazon. The series has already been dubbed "the best show on TV" and the best drama about hacking.
The ten-part series stars Rami Malek as Elliot, an isolated computer programmer recruited by a shadowy figure known as Mr Robot (played by Christian Slater) to hack the firm he is paid to protect. As Elliot deals with issues of substance abuse and his own unstable psyche, he must also decide whether to take down the multinational CEOs he believes are destroying the world.
Amazon's Jason Ropell told Digital Spy that the streaming service was "delighted" to be bringing the show to UK audiences. "This is hands down one of the best and freshest shows on TV and has had critics and audiences raving around the world," Ropell said.
The show, which has just aired on the USA Network, has indeed received widespread acclaim from critics.
Erik McClanahan on Indiewire calls Mr Robot "blazingly cinematic" and "the best new show on TV". It also features "the most compelling and complex protagonists on TV": a confused, black hoodie-wearing loner who never leaves his office cubicle, played brilliantly by Rami Malek, says McClanahan.
Brian Lowry in Variety writes that "the summer's most buzzed show" turns out to be "a mind-bending head rush of a ride". Lowry says it's hard to remember a mainstream US programme that has so brutally skewered "an industrial complex that callously puts profits ahead of people".
While such storylines often feel like a dime a dozen, says Lowry, Mr Robot somehow makes this one seem "bracing and timely". So much so that the network decided to postpone the season finale after the Virginia TV shootings coincided eerily with the series plot.
Jenna Wortham of the New York Times agrees the show is "eerily real". Any good television show can let you crawl inside the head of a character, says Wortham, "but Mr Robot does more: it gives you access to the inner workings of a culture".
Wortham notes that the series is also like "a fictional CliffsNotes for the dark corridors of the web", offering an insight into the mentality of the kind of figures that, for example, targeted Ashley Madison.
Kim Zetter of Wired is more cautious in her praise. The series really does nail the portrayal of "a certain type of hacker who hacks to make sense of the world and connect to it" and is impelled by a sense of social justice, says Zetter. But there are a series of missteps, such as the paint-by-numbers ensemble cast of clichéd geeks, and a series of illogical plot points.
All these missteps are forgiven whenever Malek is onscreen, says Zetter. She adds that it's not perfect, but Mr Robot is "the best hacking show yet".
All ten episodes of Mr Robot will be available for streaming from Friday 16 October, though serious hackers may have already downloaded it.
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