High-tech robots challenge society in AMC drama ‘Humans’

TORONTO – “The Walking Dead” has zombie school and AMC’s new sci-fi robot drama “Humans” has synth school.

British actress Gemma Chan says a special acting workshop was set up for those tackling robot roles on the London-shot show.

Just as zombie school taught extras on “The Walking Dead” to shamble and snarl, synth school revolved around establishing and learning a universal physical language for actors playing synthetic characters.

“The writers and directors very much didn’t want anything overtly robotic but they did want something that was other than human,” Chan explained in a recent phone interview from New York.

“These things are ultimately machines so every movement has to have an economy and an efficiency for it. It was a question of literally learning how to walk again and how to stand up, sit down, turn around, do all kinds of different tasks. I had to learn to be a bit more ambidextrous so I could do things equally with both hands, which is hard because I’m very right-handed. All kinds of stuff.

“And once we’d established a kind of general set of rules we did individual work with a choreographer to make the movement unique to our characters, because obviously you have different models of synths and some are more advanced than others and some are kind of older models.”

And some seem very human, such as Chan’s domestic worker Anita.

The beautiful Anita is purchased by the busy Hawkins family to help around their London home. But working mom Laura, played by Katherine Parkinson, is not entirely comfortable with the idea and becomes increasingly suspicious of whether Anita is as compliant and docile as she appears to be.

Meanwhile, other synth owners like William Hurt’s aging George Millican seem more than willing to ascribe human qualities to their household helpers. In his case, he treats a young-looking but out-of-date companion named Odi more like a son than a machine.

George was once a mechanical engineer on the original synth project but retreated from the world when his wife Mary died. When Odi begins to malfunction, government officials force George to accept a new, stern synthetic caregiver named Vera.

Hurt says his character is driven by thoroughly human impulses.

“In my mind, what George did was he made a decision to (commit to) his relationship to his wife and to vulnerability and to mortality,” Hurt says in a separate phone interview from New York.

“I think it’s his visionary concept of the most a human being can be. And also that suffering is of value. Which is the issue about sentience, you know — when you make sentience are you going to make it capable of suffering? That’s a big question.”

Other storylines revolve around Leo, played by Colin Morgan, and his synth, Max, played by Ivanno Jeremiah, who are desperate to find someone from Leo’s past. Then there’s police officer Peter Drummond, played by Neil Maskell, who specializes in synth-related disputes. At home, he’s frustrated by his wife’s reliance on a flawless synthetic physical therapist.

Hurt says the scenarios are not hard to imagine actually happening, noting that technology already infiltrates so much of our day-to-day lives.

“It won’t be long before these things are subcutaneously installed,” says Hurt, who also played a robot expert in Steven Spielberg’s 2001 drama “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence.”

“It scares me and it thrills me. It scares me if we use it wrong, if it backfires on us.”

The 65-year-old Hurt says he’s fairly comfortable with technology, but only because he studied computer science at Columbia University two years ago. He encourages any senior confounded by the digital world to do the same.

“I think some people are giving up and I think they should not do that. Don’t give up,” says Hurt, nevertheless noting that society hasn’t made it easy for older tech users to thrive.

“Go for it, because you’re not too old.”

“Humans” premieres Sunday on AMC.