‘Incorporated’ Review: Syfy Dystopian Drama Has Nothing New To Say
Debuting on November 30 on Syfy, Incorporated paints a familiar picture of a dystopian future where big business controls almost everything, the world is ravaged, and the line between the haves and the have-nots is stark and harsh.
Despite a strong performance from Dennis Haysbert as a security heavy for multi-national Spiga Biotech and the appearance of Julia Ormond as the company boss, the series created by David and Alex Pastor and executive produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon doesn’t really have anything new to say. As I say in my video review above, the bleak Incorporated is merely Dystopian Drama 101, pulling from the likes of Gattaca, Blade Runner, Elysium and tons of other movies and shows mining the genre.
Set in 2074, with the coasts gone and most of America now living around the Great Lakes — in either slick, heavily securitized and well-appointed corporate-run Green Zones or in desolate and lawless Red Zones, where life is cheap and hard — there is something very medieval or last days of the Roman Empire about the Milwaukee-set Incorporated in a physical sense. At the same time, as rising corporate star and Ormond’s son-in-law Ben Larson, Reign alum Sean Teale is a man on a mission and with many secrets amidst pithy lines about Canada building a wall to keep out Americans trying to flee to the Great White North illegally and poignant lines about the Mexican border. Unfortunately, the premise doesn’t really add up, and the clichés overwhelm a series that at its heart seems to want to be a look at power and class but is flattened by it own format.
Click on my video review above to see more of what I think of the Ted Humphrey-showrun series. With the first episode of the 10-episode first season up online since November 16, take a look and tell us what you think.
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