While Aldous Huxley’s seminal sci-fi novel Brave New World was adapted by Peacock back in 2020, an underrated Prime Video series managed to do a better job of tackling the book’s themes by adding a little bit of The Matrix into the mix. The 2020s have been a golden era for sci-fi TV so far. From sci-fi’s answer to The Wire, The Expanse, getting a three-season revival on Prime Video after the show was canceled by SyFy to Apple TV’s space opera Foundation making Asimov accessible for mainstream viewers, it’s a great time to love sci-fi.
However, not every entry into the genre is as successful as these shows. While Netflix’s cyberpunk thriller Altered Carbon was superb, the show was canceled after only two seasons. Similarly, Peacock’s Huxley adaptation Brave New World only lasted one season, although that was due to middling reviews. Meanwhile, Prime Video’s superior alternative was also canceled after its debut outing.
Based on the 2014 novel of the same name by Neuromancer author William Gibson, The Peripheral was an eight-episode blend of The Matrix and Brave New World that arguably outdid Peacock’s straightforward adaptation when it came to bringing Huxley’s story to life onscreen. The show told the story of Chloë Grace Moretz’s Flynne Fisher, an avid gamer who is given the chance to test an experimental new headset that drops her into a uniquely immersive VR in 2032.
The Peripheral Does Aldous Huxley’s Themes Better Than Peacock’s Brave New World Series
However, not long after Fisher tries out this headset for the first time, she soon learns that she’s not playing a game at all, but rather piloting the body of an android 70s years into the future. The Peripheral avoids a common time travel plot hole through quantum tunneling, explaining that while Fisher’s consciousness is transported into the future and implanted in the robot, her body remains in 2032.
While even Prime Video’s later sci-fi Outer Range didn’t provide this level of explanation for its time-twisting plot, this wasn’t enough to save The Peripheral from cancellation. The show lasted only one season, which was heartbreaking for many genre fans given how thoughtfully the series explored its dystopian future version of London. Here, ordinary humans have become walking amusements for the wealthy elite, who control their lives like pawns on a chess board.
The Peripheral’s Main Character Was A Riff On The Matrix’s Neo
Where 2020’s Brave New World depicted the hedonistic excesses of Huxley’s imagined future in a disappointingly straightforward, predictable manner that often felt awkwardly puritanical, The Peripheral was more critical of the show’s powerful villains and the way the rich turn normal people into toys via technological control. Meanwhile, much like HBO’s Westworld, The Peripheral also borrowed some inspiration from The Matrix movies to make its future more viscerally compelling.
With its story of a seemingly “normal” protagonist plugging into a machine and becoming a virtual superhero, The Peripheral owes as much creative debt to The Matrix movies as it does Brave New World. Of course, longtime sci-fi fans will soon recognize the feedback loop at play here, since The Peripheral author Gibson also penned the legendary cyberpunk novel Neuromancer, a 1984 classic that inspired The Matrix in the first place.
Not only is Neuromancer also a trippy, noir-inspired thriller where a disheveled antihero spends most of their life in a comforting computer simulation until a powerful but mysterious female character drags them out of this numb existence, but the book’s virtual reality is literally called “The Matrix.” Thus, while The Peripheral functions as an unconventional expansion of ideas explored in Huxley’s classic Brave New World, the show is also an homage to The Matrix, which was itself an homage to an earlier book from the show’s creator.
- Release Date
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2022 – 2022-00-00
- Network
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Prime Video
- Showrunner
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Scott B. Smith
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Chloe Grace Moretz
Flynne Fisher
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