Devs

Technology has become so intrinsic to the way we live – our commerce, our communication, our everyday organisation – that there’s sometimes a tendency to view the people who dream up and deliver the next leap forward as geniuses, even gods, rather than people with a knack for arranging ones and zeros. (I know, I know, that’s a reductive way of describing the tech industry.)

This seems to be an area of interest for writer-director Alex Garland, who examined it in his 2014 film Ex Machina and delves deeper still with the eight-episode miniseries Devs. In his first venture into television, Garland’s precision as a stylist and rigour as a thinker are as evident and sharp as they have been in his big-screen projects. He’s at the helm of all eight episodes, however, the pacing verges on glacial and the storytelling is a little opaque at times, so patience and focus are recommended. 

In the early stages of the series (two episodes were made available for review), it’s not made clear what kind of technology the Silicon Valley company Amaya actually develops in its top-secret ‘Devs’ division, a compound as ornate as a palace and alien as a spacecraft, but rest assured it’s cutting-edge enough to drive to tears those people exposed to it. 

Within a day of being recruited for the Devs team, Sergei (Karl Glusman) is dead. His lover and fellow Amaya worker Lily (Sonoya Mizuno) is told he died by suicide, and even shown video footage confirming it, but she’s sceptical and suspicious enough to start investigating on her own, which puts her on a collision course with Forest (Nick Offerman, who is excellent), the Amaya boss whose mellow benevolence runs parallel with his messianic ambition.

A somewhat conventional industrial espionage plot is the engine driving Devs from the beginning, and it’s engaging enough, but it’s clear that Garland is far more interested in posing questions and exploring ideas about the junction – and possible collision – of technology and human nature. Everything the Devs team is working on hints at something transcendental, even mystical, and the series is clearly so intrigued by its world and characters that its fascination can’t help but rub off on the viewer. This is an alluring and disquieting peek behind the curtain.