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Kill All Others is the final episode of Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams, although prior to being on Channel 4, all ten episodes have since aired on Amazon Prime where this became the seventh episode. Why? Who knows.
Anyhoo, this one begins on October 19th, 2054, in a world where you can talk to, and interact with, adverts, basically making them out like a sex toy, much to the annoyance of Philbert Noyce (Mel Rodriguez) whose wife is enjoying ads the wrong way…
Meanwhile, Vera Farmiga plays a Presidential candidate for the team Mexuscan, with the catchphrase “Yes, us can”, thus aping Obama’s “Yes, we can”, even though, a lot of stuff… he couldn’t.
Philbert’s a frugal man who eschews buying an automated car, even though it’ll get him to work on time, and his place of employment is a factory which has automated down from 3,000 people to just three. However, things change when this female candidate makes a Presidency policy statement that we should “kill all others”, but… how come only he heard it? Was it all in his head? No-one else seems to have noticed.
In what follows, it seems whatever he tries to do in life, everyone appears to see HIM as the problem… and who are the Others? Is Philbert losing his mind, or is he spot-on about everything? There’s an overall feeling of paranoia and government control, as if everything is tracking you and watching you at all times.
Also, in the future, the widescreen aspect ratio of TVs more closely resembles a an upright mobile phone image. Another retrograde step is that no-one watches video on their phones, just on a communal screen on public transport with the sound coming through earpieces, so it’s like watching a film on a plane in the ’90s.
I did enjoy this as it built up the suspense, but like with a lot of these dramas: it fails when it comes to the revelation and that one really didn’t work for me. It never came up with a proper explanation for the phrase, and just left you feeling ‘meh’ about it all.
Kill All Others is airs next Monday, March 19th, at 10pm. Once broadcast, each episode will be on All4, but the entire series is available on Amazon Video.
You can also buy the Electric Dreams book on Paperback and Kindle.
Score: 7/10
Director: Dee Rees
Producer: Lynn Horsford
Screenplay: Dee Rees (based on the short story by Philip K Dick)
Music: Bear McCreary
Cast:
Philbert Noyce: Mel Rodriguez
Maggie Noyce: Sarah Baker
Lenny: Jason Mitchell
Ed: Glenn Morshower
Supervisor: Louis Herthum
Peace Sergeant: DuShon Monique Brown
The Candidate: Vera Farmiga
Insurance Adjuster: Kathy Scambiatterra
Yellow Bonnet Girl: Kylan Conroy
Cowboy Shave Ad: Dale Rivera
Brazilian Coffee Ad: Bassam Abdelfattah
Peace Officer #1: Joseph Luis Caballero
Peace Officer #2: Joe Yau
Interviewer: Lia D Mortensen
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.