Devs (2020)

During the first few episodes of this show I was really enjoying it. I have always liked time travel stories, and the grainy images of Christ on the cross (setting aside the lack of documentation of his existence) and Joan of Arc and other ancient or medieval images was intriguing to me. And then, for me anyway, the plot drifted towards a more hard sci-fI, speculative physics sort of plot. Multiple universes, the idea that everything we do may or may not be determined by what came before. Well, I won’t delve into all that because I am not at all qualified to do so. Don’t get me wrong; the series still interested me and I stuck around until the end, but I would have preferred that it had stuck closer to the time travel portal aspect of the story rather than the theoretical underpinnings. It is perhaps more of a thriller than a thought experiment surrounding our perceptions of history.

If Devs had been a 2 hour movie, I would've felt differently, but stretching it out over an entire series makes the experience feel tiring. I really wanted to like it. There are good performances, and it's rare to find a show dive into interesting concepts. The problem is that it doesn't really dive in. It just splashes around on the surface for 10 hours, then takes an abrupt left turn at the very end rather than actual deliver an answer to the questions its asking. If you don't mind that, you might still want to check it out, but I wouldn't expect it to deliver on the promise of the first two episodes. If you're interested in the concepts, I think it's better to just research the actual material.