Is this Alexander Skarsgård’s next big thing?

Alexander Skarsgård is one of those actors who is, by any metric, having a great career—he’s been on numerous great TV shows, he’s won a bunch of awards, he’s a fun cameo in a bunch of other great TV shows, he’s been in more great movies (Melancholia, The Hummingbird Project, The Diary of a Teenage Girl, War on Everyone, The Northman) than he has stinkers (Battleship, The Legend of Tarzan). And yet somehow, I feel like Alexander Skarsgård isn’t as big as he should be? 

Maybe I’m just mad that The Northman isn’t a bigger deal. Or maybe it’s that he hasn’t had a defining role since True Blood. Sure, he won most of his big awards for playing wretched husband Perry Wright in Big Little Lies, but that role, despite critical acclaim, doesn’t define him like Eric Northman. Maybe what Alexander Skarsgård needs is another defining role to remind people he’s great. And maybe he has that role in a show from Apple TV+ called Murderbot.

The show is adapted from Martha Wells’ book series, The Murderbot Diaries. It’s about a security robot, or “SecUnit”, who self-actualizes and tries to hide its sentience from the humans around it, whom it views with varying degrees of distaste, judgment, condemnation, and sometimes friendliness and compassion, which it resents. Skarsgård stars as Murderbot in the adaptation. The trailer dropped yesterday, and it looks GREAT.

It's like a futuristic workplace comedy with a killer cyborg who just wants to be left alone to watch its shows—I would 100% watch The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon—but begrudgingly begins cooperating with humans on a space mission when they come under threat. Skarsgård is perfect for this kind of role because he is SO good at playing the subtext. He can go big if needed, but he excels at playing the subtler end of the emotional scale, which is why he thrives in roles like Perry Wright and Lukas Matsson, because he can simultaneously suggest affability and menace. Given that for at least part of the show, Murderbot is trying to hide its sentience from humans, this seems like a perfect role to exploit Skarsgård’s multifaceted deliveries and subtle emotional scale. 

I’m also just here for a workplace comedy. We’ve run the gamut on workplace shows over the last twenty years, from the “work as family” sitcoms of the 2000s and 2010s, like The Office and Parks & Rec, to the current trend of “work is trying to kill you” dramas like Severance. The disillusionment is understandable, people are working their asses off and getting nowhere, wealth inequality has gotten worse, and the pandemic exposed the hollowness of “we’re like a family” for a lot of people. (Also, “we’re like a family” is usually a giant red flag for a toxic workplace.)

But there is still something charming about a workplace comedy, because you don’t get to choose your coworkers. You HAVE to get along with them, at least to an extent. That sets up so many potential dynamics! What we’re missing right now is a workplace comedy where the vibe isn’t “we’re like a family” but “we’re just trying to get through the day so stop microwaving fish in the break room, DIANE”. 

Murderbot is giving me DIANE vibes—so is Sanctury Moon, frankly—because the folks on the mission don’t seem super enamored with one another. But they’re stuck with each other, a point highlighted by the trailer song, which is literally “Stuck in the Middle With You”. Plus, there’s Murderbot itself, who isn’t so sure of these humans, either. So yes, I am here for Murderbot. There is entirely TOO MUCH TV right now, but Murderbot premieres on May 16, and I will make time for it. Maybe it can fill the workplace comedy void without trying to convince us that our co-workers are our family.