Sky’s nine-part adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s dystopian classic hasn’t got much to say – but that’s easy to ignore with all the bare flesh on show
There are two main ways you can approach the adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s 1932 classic of dystopian literature, Brave New World. You can take the “Oh, my goodness – what a richly fertile field of possibilities we have before us, to tease out inferences and draw parallels new and old between the vision of what was to become of humanity and where we find ourselves! To mark what was prescient in the imagination of the 30s and what it could not, and never did envision! To site ourselves in Huxley’s world and use its masterful commentary on his own era to propel and inform one on our own! What an opportunity to probe enduring ethical quandaries and stress test psychological theories! To contribute in some small way to the furthering of an answer to the question that has vexed mankind since time immemorial – what is happiness?!” approach.
Or you can take the other way, which is to say: “Hang on – if these dudes are all doped-up pleasure seekers who have disapplied standard moral rules and are encouraged by the state to pursue free love in the service of a harmonious collectivity instead of maintaining sexual probity that, it’s argued, marks and fuels the individualism, selfishness and jealousy that leads to aggression, war and strife … we could – fill the whole screen with tits?”
