The Future Sucks in The Peripheral, but Luckily the Show Itself Doesn't
Well, the future sucking in The Peripheral is no surprise for anyone, who noticed that the show is based on a book by William Gibson, the man who earned his renown by pioneering the cyberpunk subgenre, notable for exploring the ways by which super-technologies can make our lives worse.
Whether the show itself is going to suck was a more interesting question, given that until now Gibson had little success with film or TV adaptations of his works. Johnny Mnemonic (starring Keanu Reeves ) was the best adaptation Gibson's stories got until now, and that film wasn't good by any means, and numerous adaptation projects have simply failed to produce anything.
There were objective reasons for that. Gibson's books are genuinely difficult to film, full of futuristic things that might not translate properly to the screen at all, or at least require a serious CGI budget, from characters sharing consciousness and interactions with sapient computer programs to fantastic cities of the future and gleaming space stations.
But now we have the preliminary answer to that question – the show is actually good! The Peripheral tells a story of Flynne Fisher (Chloë Grace Moretz), living in declining southern hinterlands of the near-future United States, and earning real money playing an immersive virtual-reality video game.
But then jacking into a new kind of VR results in her finding herself not in another game, but in London of the far-off future, where she pilots a human-like "peripheral". From there a gripping story, involving interactions between the two timelines and more unfolds.
The fact that The Peripheral is based on a tightly plotted novel allays one of the problems which its producers have encountered when creating Westworld – running beyond the initial plot roadmap and getting tangled in its own plot threads, thus creating a feeling in the audience that all this complicated setup is never going to result in a proper payoff.
The Peripheral is well-written and well-filmed, and the flaws it has (such as costumes too blandly generic and actors too blandly handsome for a drug-addled dystopia) can be excused by limitations of its production. While only the first couple of episodes have been released and the final verdict will have to wait for the completed product, both Gibson's fans, and those unfamiliar with his books, are liking the show very much so far.