Humans, a co-production between America's AMC and Britain's Channel 4 is a remake of a Swedish version of the same show.
Its most recognisable star is veteran American movie actor William Hurt, who plays an ailing robot inventor who finds himself trapped by the utopian ideal of his creation - but mostly the drama is domestic rather than laboratory.
The series is set in a parallel present where robots are cooler than Apple Watches and centres on a family that acquires a "synth," which the husband (Tom Goodman-Hill) purchases as the obvious answer to his lawyer's wife's long work hours and the fact that he can't keep up with the raising of their three kids. When the wife (Katherine Parkinson) expresses her unhappiness at this purchase, the husband barks: "You don't get to waltz back in the door and tell me what this family needs."
So the attractive, ice-cool robot named Anita (Gemma Chan) gets to stay - but it turns out she's a retread, who was captured and rewired and put back into service after she and several other free-thinking synths tried to rebel. More twists ensue in the forthcoming eight episodes of the show which has been renewed for a second season.
"We don't want to show this world as a dystopia or a utopia; we want to show the pros and cons of this world," says executive producer Jonathan Brackley explains.
