This show thinks it’s better than it is.

It is not enough to have a good photography and a decent soundtrack (even if sometimes cacophonic) to make a TV series worthy of being remembered. Devs is very pretentious from this point of view and is not so original about the content that supports it. The actors' interpretations all seem the same, none of them stand out in a particular way, but I think that the characters are in some way required to remain rigidly confined in a plot which in turn is icy. To narrate the distortions of technological dystopias, the most elegant formula is confirmed to be that of Black Mirror, monothematic episodes, capable of leaving interpretations open to spectators, even with a little irony. Devs, on the other hand, is a trickle. It was a huge effort to watch all the episodes, but I was curious to see where they wanted to go. Eight hours to talk about [spoiler]determinism and free will[/spoiler] in a boring and Manichean way. There are many other better things to watch, fortunately.

I love big ideas in stories. The problem is when the idea takes over and gets in the way of character, plot and emotion. To be fair, Alex Garland's _Devs_ tries hard to avoid this. It also has a big, ambitious idea at its centre and it's entirely possible that I didn't follow it as well as I thought I did. But the fact remains, the further I got into this miniseries the less invested I became. The best thing to come out of it is the stellar performance by Nick Offerman. He proves without a doubt that he's capable of so much more than comedy and is the only cast member to inject some real emotion into his role. It helps that his part was written to allow for this, because almost everyone else here is close to robotic. There's a real laconic feel to _Devs_, it's in no hurry to tell its story and its characters kind of float through everything that happens. I have a feeling it was somewhat intentional, but it was also a poor choice. And while I have started to hate falling back on this word to describe things, I have to say just how pretentious it all comes across. There are visual tone poems and mood pieces all throughout, a character monologues poetry over the course of two episodes while we are given montages of multiple reality outcomes. It can be painful. But it's also a ride. It has a pretty strong start, and I liked the way we the audience are allowed to piece the mystery together ourselves before any details are given. It's the sort of thing that's designed to make you feel clever and that's part of how it tricks you. Overall, I'm just glad I watched it for Nick Offerman, because he deserves all the praise. The ending is nonsense, though. And given the premise, I'm not sure it could have been anything else.

Ideas >> execution. Glad that Garland keeps the most engrossingly dense stuff for the tail end (last 2-3 episodes), but then this should have been much shorter than it is. The previous, more normal storylines are all ill-served by the portentous tone and pacing, which work at the beginning when introducing the world and at the end when plunging deep into its core sci-fi concepts, but it makes the already thin, familiar middle murder/espionage episodes drag all the more. The core characters should have been those played by Stephen McKinley Henderson and Cailee Spaeny.