As the name suggests, the show Murderbot is about a killing machine – a cyborg security unit programmed to protect humans in a distant future in a galaxy far away.
It – because that is how “it” identifies – is played by Alexander Skarsgård, an actor who’s done a fair few cold and heartless characters before now. But while there is action, violence and many visits to the medical bay due to giant alien centipedes and, yes, killer robots, Murderbot is also smart, funny and the sort of sci-fi you don’t have to like sci-fi to enjoy.
It’s refreshingly dystopia-free, and one which tackles AI from the AI’s perspective. It’s also a workplace comedy, a corporate satire and a show that, like the books it is based on, has an undercurrent of neurodiversity.
It is possibly not, however, family viewing – though the young daughter of the show’s co-executive producer, Toa Fraser, doesn’t agree. “My 8-year-old loves it, which is kind of scary,” says Fraser. “She got hooked with the opening sequence with the music. She’s always dancing to it.”
Fraser, who also directed two of the first season’s 10 half-hour episodes, isn’t the only Kiwi on the American series for streamer Apple TV+, which was mostly filmed in northern Ontario – where the occasional bear would wander through the location.
Recruited for her action chops, Roseanne Liang directed two instalments. The show also gave something to Liang, the action blockbuster nerd who makes a point of watching Terminator 2 every year: her first killer robot. “Oh, my god yeah. As soon as someone told me what the premise was, I was like, ‘Well, this is tailor made for me.’
“I hadn’t quite realised what the tone was, and I think that’s one of the most refreshing things about this project, its tone. It’s a comedic tone unlike any other. Would you call it comedy, Toa?”
Fraser: “It is pretty funny.”
The pair are on Zoom together from different parts of Auckland, happy to hear that the Listener has included the series in its list of best shows of 2025’s first half (go here). While declaring some bias, they agree.
The two first met in the mid-noughties when they both travelled to a New Zealand film festival in Japan with their respective debut movies – Fraser’s No. 2 and Liang’s Banana in a Nutshell. Since then, Fraser, who started out as a playwright, has delivered a diverse run of features (The Dead Lands) and documentaries (Giselle), before becoming a gun for hire on a dozen or more high-end American television shows, including being co-executive producer on Sweet Tooth, the Netflix sci-fi fantasy that was filmed here during the pandemic.
After her NZ-filmed supernatural World War II bomber film Shadow in the Cloud, and directing and co-creating the local dystopian black comedy Creamerie, Liang’s first overseas directing foray was episodes of the live-action take on the cartoon series Avatar: The Last Airbender, also for Netflix.
Murderbot is also an adaptation of a novella with a passionate fanbase – All Systems Red, the first in Martha Wells’ acclaimed The Murderbot Diaries series, about a security cyborg or “SecUnit” that hacks its governor module to become sentient. The freedom it most wants is to be alone to binge space soap operas while dealing with some residual recollections from its wiped memory.
Passing itself off as compliant, it’s assigned to protection duty on an expedition to an uninhabited planet by a scientific team from a right-on planet prone to group hugs and ensemble humming, but not so good with ray guns and survival tactics. “Space hippies,” observes Liang.
The show was created and written by Chris and Paul Weitz, the fraternal producing-directing-writing team who started out on comedies such as American Pie and About a Boy before taking on every genre possible, including sci-fi. Chris Weitz co-wrote both Star Wars spin-off Rogue One and AI-themed futuristic action movie The Creator.
The Weitz’s scripts, which changed a few things from Wells’ book, might have set that tone. But it was up to the directors and the ensemble – led by the deadpan of Skarsgård and the warm earnestness of British theatre actress Noma Dumezweni as the leader of the scientists – to deliver on it.
Liang: “It was on the page, but not 100% of it. There was also a percentage of it that came through Alexander’s study of the character, and there were comedians and comedic actors but also dramatic actors in the ensemble.
We actually re-shot some scenes, not necessarily because I’d done something wrong, but I’d read something as quite dramatic, and we played it really dramatically with the actors and Chris and Paul would say, ‘Could you do a version where there’s a little more levity?’ And that was absolutely the right call.”
Skarsgård’s SecUnit’s internal monologue is the show’s most prominent voice. The pair laugh about the discussions over how much of the time the cyborg should have his visor up. It was possibly more than in the books. Liang: “When there’s a star like Alexander, you don’t want to not see his face.”
The Swede is also the latest in the long line of humans-as-androids played by European-born actors, which includes Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator and Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty in Blade Runner.
Liang: “On set, I remember Chris and Paul were, ‘Make sure you refer to it as it,’ which is so weird when you’re talking to Alexander and you’re calling him ‘it’.
“He’s a really manly man, so it did take some getting used to this kind of awkward androgynous version of him.”
Fraser: “He just has that thing about working with a camera and the only other actor I’ve ever worked with who’s like that is James Rolleston. James and Alexander both have this relationship with the camera that’s almost supernatural. You’ve got no idea what he’s doing in the moment, unless you’re paying really close attention.”
Murderbot streams on Apple TV+. The entire series will be available when the final arrives on July 11.
