The original show co-produced by Matador Film and SVT was sold to nearly 50 territories and expectations are high for the edgier and darker new season.
With Real Humans you brought to Swedish and world televisions a new genre-sci-fi- rarely exploited in Swedish TV dramas. Who were your biggest fans among viewers?
Lars Lundström: In Sweden the show attracted a much younger audience than SVT’s tradition viewers and I think it was one of SVT’s TV drama series that had the biggest male-oriented audience, probably because of the genre. The show was also extremely successful in France (via French channel Arte) where people were interested in the philosophical aspects, the use of the hubot universe to tell metaphors about our own reality.
You wrote everything on your own for Season 1 but shared the writing credit with Alex Haridi on Season 2. How was your collaboration and were you able to put your creative stamp on the entire show?
LL: Alex and I had a great collaboration. We invented the storyline together and then divided the scripts. I wrote scripts number 1-2-6-9-10 and he wrote the rest. I was involved in every aspect of the shooting and our company Matador Film put up the show as creators for SVT.
Imposing a new universe and exploring a new genre-sci-fi- was very risky for you and SVT but it paid off. Was it easier to write Season 2? What were the new challenges?
L.L.: Season 2 has to be an extension of the first show; you have to seek other places, themes and characters to explore within the same universe. Hubots are kind of old news now, so we had to go further in the depiction of their universe. Season 2 is darker, a bit more violent but it’s also funny. We don’t take ourselves too seriously when we play with metaphors.
What main themes are you exploring in Season 2? Do the golden rules of Isaac Asimov robotics still apply (whereby robots may not injure humans, must obey them and protect their own existence)?
LL: Yes the rules of Asimov still apply for hubots acquired by humans. But the quest and hunt for the code that can free hubots from their condition is more violent and ruthless. We dig deeper into the relationship between robots and humans, we inspect humans’ ability to transfer their consciousness into those machines and the boundaries between the two worlds are further erased. Again, there are a lot of philosophical questions and although I won’t spoil the season, I can tell that it ends in a peak with this questioning: what is being human, could a machine be considered a human and be part of our society as a normal citizen?
I read recently a specialised AI Japanese magazine and it says that there are no precise criteria defining a human being. If you could put up these criteria you could also make humans in a legal way. That’s very dangerous. These are questions we will have to deal with in the future.
What new characters or settings have you introduced and what characters have bigger roles?
LL: We are introducing new settings, such as the ‘Hub Battle Land’, a kind of amusement park where you can play games with paintballs, where hubots are kept and used as targets. It’s quite an uncomfortable place. The disfigured Jonas (who dreams of cloning himself as a beautiful free hubot) is the one who has opened that place, and Silas (the trafficker and illegal modifier of hubots) works there. Characters that have bigger parts include the beautiful hubot Flash (played by Josephine Alhanko). She has a powerful drive to be one of the humans, to have a family and a home. She eventually achieves this in the second season. She also has a strong love story with the human Douglas (Alexander Karim). The Engman family stays central to the story.
There is a resurgence of fantasy and genre TV dramas, from True Blood to the French TV series The Returned that just grabbed Best Drama at the International Emmys. It must be stimulating for a writer/creator to see new universes being brought to world screens and VOD players investing in original drama…
L.L.: Yes we are in a golden era for television, with new players on the market and the interest is huge from the younger audience. I think it’s because a movie can grab the attention but the experience ends when the movie ends. With a TV series, you can live much longer with the characters and the stories.
What’s next for you and your production company Matador Film?
L.L.: We have quite a few projects in development. We’re currently working on a third season of Real Humans and on a series for TV4 set in Thailand. It’s a character-driven criminal drama series in 8-10 episodes. Our wish is also to co-produce more with European partners, to take down the borders and language barriers to create a more united Europe.