A still from Beyond the Aquila Realm.Īnother is the first, Sonnie’s Edge, set in a dystopian London where horrific monsters, controlled by their ‘masters’, are pitted against each other in gladiatorial fights. It’s one of the show’s many episodes that talks about women and their bodies, and the desecration they often face at the hands of men. It’s a stunning marriage of spirituality and steampunk, set in alternate-history Hong Kong, about a farmer and a shape-shifting demon woman. Indeed, some, like Good Hunting, appear to be hand-drawn. Neither of these episodes are similar, either visually or thematically. They also direct the more irreverent Alternate Histories, in which Adolf Hitler meets a premature death in six hilarious scenarios, and alters the course of world history. This episode’s directors, Victor Maldonado and Alfredo Torres, are also responsible for two more palate cleansers - Three Robots, about three robots taking a tour of a post-apocalyptic city and pointing out the flaws in humanity that led to our downfall. People of all shapes, colours and sizes gaze stupidly as a bowl of yogurt becomes sentient, offers sane political counsel, takes over the presidency and promptly self-destructs.

The five-minute-long episode, conveniently titled When The Yogurt Took Over, tells a stop-motion-inspired story about humanity’s hubris (and its resulting fall) in the most ridiculous manner. But while Brooker has of late developed a tendency to break away from his miserable worldview and write optimistic stories such as San Junipero, the most levity you can expect from Love, Death & Robots is from its brief forays into the world of satire. Every episode of Love, Death & Robots begins with a similar title card, and is largely self-contained. There are, however, numerous hat-tips to its more successful cousin, Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror. It plays more like a sizzle real for the various studios that are involved, rather than make any overarching point about humanity and its relationship with technology. But what sticks out in Love, Death & Robots is how unwaveringly it favours the animation over the story.

Like most anthology series, it is uneven beyond measure.

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