Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Devs’ On FX on Hulu, Where A Young Coder Tries To Solve A Murder At A Mysteriously Opaque Software Company

Devs is the first FX-developed series to be exclusively shown on Hulu under the “FX on Hulu” model that debuted this week. And what’s interesting is that the show, a sci-fi murder mystery, could have fit well on either service. It’s dystopia-lite, and has heroes and antiheroes that are both worth rooting for. So it’s definitely a good show to start this new era with. Plus: Nick Offerman!

DEVS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A man with long hair and a beard, standing in the woods and looking plaintively at a narrow beam with a picture of a girl on it. Then we see shots of either present-day or near-future San Francisco.

The Gist: Both Lily Chan (Sonoya Mizuno) and her boyfriend Sergei (Karl Glusman) work at the vast tech company Amaya; she’s in encryption, he’s in AI. It’s a big day for Sergei, as he’s about to present his team’s software that predicts living beings’ movements to the company’s CEO, simply named Forest (Nick Offerman). During the meeting, Forest and his woman-of-few-words assistant Katie (Alison Pill) are impressed by Sergei’s work, and Forest offers him a prestigious position in the mysterious Devs department.

Devs is highly secretive; no one in the company who isn’t in the division knows what it does. And the night before Sergei starts, even Lily acknowledges that he can’t tell her about work, so she’ll never ask. The next day, Sergei is interrogated by Kenton (Zach Grenier), the head of security; he’s suspicious that Sergei is Russian and he’s living with someone who is Chinese (albeit 2nd or 3rd-generation American, according to Sergei). Forest trusts Sergei enough to bring him over to the Devs building himself; Lily looks out the window of her office to see them walking into the woods together.

The Devs building is a long walk away, and Forest talks to Sergei about what people think the division does; then he explains that the building is extra-fortified for security reasons. The outside is adorned with gold-tinged pillars and the inside of the building is modern, stark, and glittering. Sergei is shocked when he’s transported to the inner building via a capsule that floats on electromagnetic waves. Inside, Forest invites him to examine the code, and take his time. But once Sergei sees the code, his revulsion to what it does makes him run to the bathroom to vomit. He sets his watch and goes back to his desk.

He leaves late at night, but is intercepted by Forest in the middle of the dark woods. Forest talks to him about determinism and the fact that humans don’t have free will, and that what’s about to happen was meant to happen. That’s when Kenton attacks a fleeing Sergei, pins him down, and suffocates him with a plastic bag. Apparently Sergei copied some code to what Forest called his “James Bond watch,” a complete no-no for anyone working at Devs.

Lily, worried that Sergei never came home, files a missing persons report. Forest and Kenton cooperate with the police, but they show footage of Sergei walking off campus towards the highway the previous night, none of which makes sense to her. She tries to get into an app called “Sudoku” on a cloned version of his phone; when she can’t get in, she asks her hacker ex-boyfriend Jamie (Jin Ha) to help. Considering she dumped Jamie for Sergei, he says “Lily, sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, fuck off.”

The next night, there’s a fire near the gigantic statue of the Amaya’s girl symbol in the center of the campus. According to Kenton’s video, Sergei went to the statue and set himself on fire.

Our Take: Devs is the brainchild of Alex Garland (Ex Machina, 28 Days Later), who created, wrote and directed the series, and it has a lot of the hallmarks of his previous work, especially Ex Machina. An ethereal setting in a somewhat vague near-future timeline, a deliberate pace, and equally deliberate performances. But when push comes to shove, the show is a murder mystery, just one wrapped in shiny wallpaper and a semi-futuristic sheen.

By the end of the first episode, after all the yawn-inducing scenes of pods going between building layers, or Forest’s plaintive speeches, you’re at the beginning of this mystery, with Lily seeing the charred remains of what is supposed to be her boyfriend but not believing what she sees. But the more intriguing story, about what Devs does and just why Forest is so protective of it, is barely off the ground.

Garland turns the creep factor up to high on the Amaya campus, with the gigantic girl statue, the woodland location, the gilded but stark environment of the Devs building, the hoop lights surrounding the trees. Offerman’s dry manner seems to work equally well when playing an evil tech mastermind than it does when playing a comedic role like Ron Swanson, which ups that creepy factor even more. And then there’s Pill as the seemingly wise but emotion-free Katie; a beautifully-shot scene where they discuss what just happened with Sergei has some wise but cold quotes from her. “Humans are hard-wired magical thinkers,” she says. “You could have the most rational person in the world, but if their kid gets hurt, they start praying.”

It’s this story, the story of human determinism, and what the Devs software is actually controlling, that will keep us watching. Amaya is positioned as an all-knowing Facebook or Google-style company, and of course the implications of how a company like that is involved in our everyday lives is a fertile source of drama; there seems to be promise that Devs will treat the topic in a less of a superficial manner than we’ve seen in other shows. Because of this, Lily’s investigation feels like it’ll be more of a distraction than anything else. Then again, when the two of them do intersect, it should be riveting to watch. We just hope Garland picks up the pace a little bit in subsequent episodes.

Sex and Skin: Nothing.

Parting Shot: Lily is overcome with gasping sobs at the sight of her boyfriend’s body. Then we see Forest looking out the window to the girl statue rising above the trees.

Sleeper Star: Jin Ha is in only a couple of scenes, but Jamie’s brush-off of Lily was one of the highlights of the first episode. Instead of being “that guy,” he tells the woman who dumped him to fuck off. Of course, he’s going to end up helping in the next few episodes, so we’ll see how he handles it.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Sergei tells Katie, “If this is true, it literally changes every single thing.” Katie replies. “No, if it’s true, it changes absolutely nothing. In a way, that’s the point.” Even though, it’s not a bad exchange, it feels like a stall, and there’s nothing more frustrating to a Peak TV viewer than something that artificially stalls more concrete answers.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Devs moves a little slowly, but the performances are top-notch and the story is intriguing enough to put up with some of Garland’s indulgences.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream Devs On Hulu