When I was a college film student I used to think about how I would film Brave New World, which is to say I have a vision for it. Part of that vision would involve actually following the structure, plot, and character development of the original, as opposed to what this miniseries does, which is to take the character names and a handful of loose concepts and turn them into an entirely different story that is more World World than Brave New World.
The story involves a futuristic caste society where a couple of high-caste citizens go slumming and wind up adopting an angry young man who proves incompatible with the society. There's lots shootings and stabbings and orgies and some mystery involving the society's origins.
So, not the book.
I read a review which complained that Brave New World was not a good entity for 2020. This may be true for the book, which was based on the idea that technology could be effectively used to make most people happy and that people in power would actually do that. But in an age where we're seeing the limits and dangers of technology, this adaptation smartly grabs the worries of today and plugs them into this story from yesterday.
Unfortunately the makers don't design their society with the same rigor as Aldous Huxley. The idea that this entire city could basically be run on drugs is unpersuasive. The concept of the Savage Lands makes no sense, in that the people there didn't choose to be there and there's no explanation of how society was bifurcated in that way.
Still, it's all really interesting and admittedly much more viscerally exciting than the book (although less intellectually exciting).
The cast is good and the story is compelling. The final episode is the least satisfying part, giving us a rather nonsensical ending and then a mysterious box that I feel if there is a season 2 to explain it will prove to be a disappointment. But in spite of its flaws, and my constant sense that wait, *that's* not how it happened in the book, I recommend this.
