dvr this
HBO, Sundays, 10 p.m.
HBO’s latest expensive, sexy, violent, high-brow drama is based on Michael Crichton’s pulpy 1973 sci-fi western about a Wild West theme park inhabited by malfunctioning androids. Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan have reinvented Westworld as a series with extraordinary special effects and an astonishingly talented cast that includes Jeffrey Wright, Evan Rachel Wood, Thandie Newton, Anthony Hopkins and Ed Harris. Because it’s HBO, there’s a lot of nudity and blood and weird problems with race and gender. But in the tradition of Lost and Battlestar Galactica, there’s also a thrilling mix of mind-bending mysteries, discomfiting emotional connections and surprisingly deep meditations on reality and what it means to be human. Easily the best new show of the fall, its seven episodes so far are available on HBOGO and HBONow.
