Biohackers is a new show developed by Netflix taking place around the University of Freiburg in the South-East of Germany. As the name already implies, the show focuses on RNA/DNA manipulation in order to modify existing or create altogether new life forms. Biohackers left a bit of split first impression with me thanks to its trailer: The first half of the trailer focused exclusively on college drama while the other half was what you’d expect for a thriller. The season itself followed the same path: About half of it focuses on the campus life or the students which then leads to off-campus research activities involving human experiments and gene manipulation.
There are a couple of things that bothered me with this show, chief among them the way biotech is being portrayed as something that at a high level can easily be done in a dorm-room. Everything can be done within a couple of hours. Let’s put it this way: I don’t remember having seen all too many gloves and clean-room equipment during the six episodes of the show. On the other end of the spectrum was the acting which was great all the way through!
To summarise: The show was entertaining enough with really good acting and quite a high production value. The plot has some nice ideas but is pushed through as if on an express train. None of the side-characters has even the slightest chance to develop and so they all feel more or less artificial and only there so that the main characters don’t have to do everything on their own. I’d probably not watch another season even though the end was interesting, to say the least.
Over the years I've written quite a few reviews 🙂 You can find them at /reviews/.
Do you want to give me feedback about this article in private? Please send it to comments@zerokspot.com.
Alternatively, this website also supports Webmentions. If you write a post on a blog that supports this technique, I should get notified about your link 🙂