Prestige television likes its glimpses of the future and those futures usually skew dark: “Westworld,” “Black Mirror,” “The Handmaid’s Tale.” But “Brave New World,” which most viewers will remember - vaguely if at all - from some high school or college syllabus, presents a more ambivalent prospect and particular challenges.

“But yeah, a couple of days there?” she added. “But the minute you scratch the surface, you start to discover stuff.” “It seems perfect,” said Jessica Brown Findlay, who plays the geneticist Lenina Crowne. Based on Aldous Huxley’s alarmingly prescient 1932 novel of free love and social control, it’s a dystopia dressed up as a utopia. All nine episodes are available on Wednesday. Pop quiz: Is this a paradise? Or a prison?Īnswer: It’s the social science backdrop for “Brave New World,” the flagship drama from Peacock, NBC’s streaming service. Everyone has useful work, perfect skin, total emotional equilibrium. Science has conquered disease and disability. Crime is a nonissue, as are homelessness and hunger. When Bernard and Lenina bring the two back to London, John serves as the mouthpiece for the conflicts between the Reservation, which still abides by traditional values, and the technocracy of the World State.Imagine a society that has solved the problems of overpopulation and environmental collapse. On the Reservation, they meet Linda, a former citizen of the World State who had stayed behind, and her son John, born through a “viviparous” procreation, a scandal in the World State. He is accompanied by Lenina Crowne, an attractive foetus technician. Bernard Marx, a petty and depressive psychiatrist who works for the Hatchery, is sent on a mission to the New Mexico Reservation, where “savages” live. It is a society that rests on consumerism and collectivism and has a rigid caste system. Fun Fact: Kurt Vonnegut admitted to ripping off the plot of Brave New World for Player Piano (1952), claiming that Brave New World’s plot “had been cheerfully ripped off from Yevgeny Zamyatin's 'We.''īrave New World follows a few characters as they live their lives in the seemingly utopian World State metropolis of London.Notable Adaptations: Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Brave New World for SyFy.Main Characters: Bernard Marx, Lenina Crowne, John, Linda, DHC, Mustapha Mond.

Themes: Utopia/dystopia technocracy individual vs.

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