The theory part he explained this way: “Huxley,” he said, “was very afraid of a world in which people would become so sexually stimulated, so pharmacologically numb and so distracted by entertainment and media, that they would fail to look within and beyond themselves in uncomfortable ways.” So the future is now? The showrunner David Wiener (“Homecoming,” “Fear the Walking Dead”) apparently had the solution, situating the social theory within a love triangle. “What often happens when you have big IP, you keep swinging until you get it right,” said Dawn Olmstead, the president of Universal Content Productions. Here’s one: How do you take a nearly 90-year-old novel, a literary crystal ball so dead-on that many of its predictions (chemical birth control, mood stabilizers, genetic engineering) have already come true, and still make it feel like the future?Ī collaboration between Universal Content Productions, which acquired the rights to the novel, and Amblin Entertainment, brought on for their world-building chops, “Brave New World” began at Syfy, then moved to USA, before landing at Peacock, shedding story and concept and the occasional writer along the way.

Prestige television likes its glimpses of the future and those futures usually skew dark: “Westworld,” “Black Mirror,” “The Handmaid’s Tale.” But “Brave New World,” which most viewers will remember - vaguely if at all - from some high school or college syllabus, presents a more ambivalent prospect and particular challenges. “But yeah, a couple of days there?” she added.

“But the minute you scratch the surface, you start to discover stuff.” “It seems perfect,” said Jessica Brown Findlay, who plays the geneticist Lenina Crowne. Based on Aldous Huxley’s alarmingly prescient 1932 novel of free love and social control, it’s a dystopia dressed up as a utopia. All nine episodes are available on Wednesday. Pop quiz: Is this a paradise? Or a prison?Īnswer: It’s the social science backdrop for “Brave New World,” the flagship drama from Peacock, NBC’s streaming service. Everyone has useful work, perfect skin, total emotional equilibrium. Science has conquered disease and disability. Crime is a nonissue, as are homelessness and hunger.

Imagine a society that has solved the problems of overpopulation and environmental collapse.

Brave new world book year