Glow’s Betty Gilpin is a nun sent on a mission to find and destroy the Holy Grail by a possibly sentient, nigh-ubiquitous AI app, in a show co-created by Lost’s Damon Lindelhof. If you’re a science fiction fan, that should be enough to have you tuning into Mrs. Davis, which is now streaming on BINGE.
The Mrs. Davis of the title is the app, which in this world runs the whole show. Under its guidance there’s no war, famine, or poverty. Which sounds good, but not everybody is a fan. Gilpin is Simone, who lives a quiet life in a convent and rejects Mrs. Davis’s invasive presence in her life until the AI makes her an offer she can’t refuse: trash the Grail and the god in the machine will self-terminate. And so, off she sets.
That’s a wild enough concept on its own, but from there unfolds a twisted journey through the dark heart of our current moment in time: a terminally online culture ravaged by division and riddled with conspiracies. The notion of the Grail might call forth images of Indiana Jones. But with its mash-up of cutting-edge tech and ancient prophecies, plus meditations on the nature of faith in the post-modern world, it’s got more in common with Neal Stephenson’s cult novel Snow Crash (and it’s weird that hasn’t been successfully adapted yet) and Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy than our favourite Nazi-punching professor.
Jake McDorman co-stars as Simone’s rodeo cowboy ex-boyfriend, Wiley, who runs an anti-Davis activist cell, while David Arquette and Elizabeth Marvel crop up as her father (deceased) and mother, respectively, and the ensemble is rounded out by character actor Margot Martindale and Ben Chaplin. If you’re a fan of highbrow absurdity, this one is a must watch.
