The Peripheral dropped last week and I was one of the first to gobble it up and ask for more. I’ve heard from highbrow critics that the intersection of Appalachia and military tech is derivative, but it really worked for me. I’ve long wondered why so many film adaptations imagined a future of order when I expect it to look like more of the same, but dirtier and less hopeful, and The Peripheral, based on a novel by William Gibson, delivers that imagery.
The show itself is a mix of Westworld and Deliverance. We open with a little teaser scene that makes zero sense other than to whet your appetite for the absurd and/or for Clarke’s third law–tech that’s so advanced, it’s indistinguishable from magic. Either way, I was like: game on.
Then we’re in the sticks. Alabamy.
The transition that gets us there begins as a plastic 3D model and then opens into the world. A run down world. A world that has lost all of its heroes.
There we meet Flynn, played by Chloe Grace Moretz, and her brother, Burton.
I don’t want to give you too much more except to say that Jack Reynor, who plays Burton, has me hooked. I can’t tell you why, exactly. Maybe it’s his eyes. Maybe because there’s a subtlety to the performance that makes it feel deeply believable. I buy it. I buy him. He feels like the actor Chris Pratt wishes he could be. There’s a certain honesty to his portrayal, and a gravitas that just works. Chloe Grace Moretz is great too, it’s just that whenever I think of the show, Jacks always are wild for Burton.
And then there’s the Londontown of the future…
And, no shit: the show is beautiful.
So what doesn’t work? Mustache-twisting B-actor bad guys. Brutal bad guy writing. Bad guy B-actors chewing scenery. And, of course, the pervasive sense that you’re not in good hands. That this is a slice of narcotic television designed to hook you when even the creators know there’s no there there.
But I’m still going to watch it.
