Philip K. Dicks Electric Dreamsis a science-fiction anthology, streaming now on Amazon.
Comparisons spring to mind, but the source material forElectric Dreamsdoesnt just predateBlack Mirror.
No one would pick out any of theElectric Dreamsstories as all-time classics.
Credit: Amazon
(A cynic wonders if theyre the only PKD material left unclaimed after decades of sold-off film rights.)
Dee Rees (Mudbound) crafted an episode called K.A.O.
that updates a conformity-era political fable for the postmodern media age.
(It stars Vera Farmiga as a cheerfully fascist political candidate.
Her inspiring slogan: Yes, Us Can!
Her inspiring message: Kill All Others.)
A few of the episodes have female protagonists that were male in the original stories.
In one episode, Anna Paquin goes to sleep and wakes up as Terrence Howard: Mondays, amiright?
Electric Dreamsstarted running on Channel 4 in Britain last year.
Theres a reason why you havent heard any exciting buzz from Brit Twitter.
The episodes fire off the gamut from kinda fine to you figured out the twist in minute three.
You probably recognize Benedict Wong fromThe MartianorDr.
(He was also Kublai Khan onMarco Polo, a show I cant pretend I watched.)
Impossible Planet begins with a tour group marveling at the sight of a supernova.
Crucially, itfeelslike Philip K. Dick.
And Wongs Andrews is a perfect Philip K. Dick character.
Theres a bit of Ray Winstone in Wongs screen presence here, larcenous and lovable.
Fancy a beer or three?
he asks his young partner Brian (Jack Reynor), tone of voice suggesting threes a low estimate.
Rats in a sewer, my friends!
Rats in a sewer!
An old woman appears.
Her names Irma Louise Gordon (Geraldine Chaplin), and shes 300-plus years old and quite deaf.
Her only companion is an impassive robot (Malik Ibheis) who speaks for his mistress.
Shes come a long way; she wants to see Earth.
Earth, Andrews tries to explain, is long dead, a planet gone extinct.
(The precise amount is two kilo positive.)
Sensing an easy mark, Andrews searches the galactic Google Maps for a planet thatresemblesthe long-lost Earth.
He proudly shows Brian a planet that couldalmostbe Earth, a planet that looks blue.
Its gray, says Brian.
The younger man isnt sure about this and seems uncertain about lying to this old woman.
Were con artists, he worries.
Andrews response is one for the ages: What other kindisthere?
Its a perfectly pitched performance, leering yet desperate.
But Impossible Planet gets an attack of the cutes, reduces Andrews to fourth banana.
Even the best Hollywood adaptations of his work miss the humor, or obscure it behind sumptuous dream-pop visuals.
Loop as it is, the 1990Total Recallcatches more of Dicks caustic humor.
The farce is so wild, though, goofy and gory.
As it is, this Amazons series offers got a smattering of space futures and digital nightmares.
The Rees episode is probably the most timely, although no dystopian political satires feel insane enough anymore.
But what stuck with me was Wongs gleeful corruption, the lightRagnaroktouch he brings to way-too-heavy-handed material.
At one point he muses, Look at the sorry state of man.
