TV Review - Upload (2020)

Greg Daniels is the Emmy-winning writer who has worked on comedies, such as Parks and Recreation, The Office, King of the Hill and Saturday Night Live. All of those shows are really good to great in their own right. However, those shows have never really been his own in terms of original ideas or really original ideas. This is the first series where he's the sole creator and even it feels derivative, and as if he's still in the shadow of other better show creators. The series is about a guy who becomes mortally wounded and chooses to have his consciousness transferred into a computer simulation where he can live indefinitely without a physical body. It feels like a rip-off from the episode of Black Mirror entitled "San Junipero" (2016) and the commentary on consumerism in the digital era is very much akin to Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018).

However, another way to look at it is that the series is a depiction of the after-life. In that, Daniels is basically cribbing from his co-creator on Parks and Recreation, Michael Schur. Schur created The Good Place (2016), which is a spoof of what the after-life would be like, if it were being run as a dysfunctional bureaucracy. The writing was more dynamic in The Good Place. The characters had a stronger comedic thrust to them. The jokes were better. I think Daniels is going for a more ironic humor about what it's like if one was living in a computer simulation or basically a video game. What helped The Good Place though was two, really engaging lead actors in Kristen Bell and Ted Danson.

Robbie Amell (The Flash and The Tomorrow People) stars as Nathan Brown, a programmer and coder who gets mortally wounded in a car accident. He has a girlfriend who pays for his consciousness transfer into the computer system. His indifference to her and increasing lack of love and connection to her is mainly the comedic hook with his character. Beyond that, there's not much of a comedic thrust to him. He's more a cipher. He's no Kristen Bell or Ted Danson. He's simply not funny. Daniels and his writers put funny things around him, but he doesn't seem to have much charm to him to make him someone I'd want to follow from any comedic episode to another.

Andy Allo (Chicago Fire and Black Lightning) co-stars as Nora Antony, the love interest to Nathan. She's a woman who works at the company that manages the computer system that houses Nathan's disembodied mind, as well as the minds of tons of other deceased people. She can also project herself into the simulation to interact with Nathan more personally. She's referred to as "angel." If this were The Good Place, she would be akin to Janet, played by D'Arcy Carden. Yet, even though Carden was playing a veritable robot, her character was more interesting and had more of a comedic edge than Allo's character does.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. Allo is a good actor and a good presence here. It's just that I feel like Daniels and his writers spent more time on the world building than giving us a reason to be really that engaged with his characters here. The world-building though isn't that original or exciting. There is one interesting angle that occurs with Nora's father. He's dying and Nora wants to put his mind into the computer system, but her father doesn't want to do so. It creates an argument between faith and technology, which is an argument that should be had, given the subject matter being about death and the afterlife. It also gets to a question that other science-fiction shows address but from a slightly different angle and that is the question of whether artificial life can have a soul.

If this series runs as long as The Good Place, it might be interesting to see where the series lands on that question. Right now, it seems squarely in the perspective of Nathan who seems as if he's an atheist and a non-religious person. It's a world-view with which I agree, but then next comes the idea of immortality. Nathan is now technically immortal, living inside a computer system. Yes, there are limitations, which the show points out, but now he'll basically live forever. The question then becomes what effect that would have on the psyche. Yet, that questions seems like it might be something for a later season. Right now, the series is about whether Nathan and Nora should be together or will be together. Of course, the obvious answer is no, but, of course, the series stacks the deck against men who are alive, putting Nora on dates with men who aren't good for her, making it seem like Nathan is the only one, which is unfair and unrealistic. If this show returns for Season 2, we'll see if that remains the case.

Rated TV-MA.
Running Time: 30 mins. / 10 eps.

Available on Amazon Prime.