Ann Droid is not a promising set-up for a comedy. It is 2029. A son abandons his elderly mother after she has had a fall, and orders a superannuated robot carer to look after her. The premise is distinctly Black Mirror. Can a comedy based on the worst fears of many of Britain’s elderly people really be funny?
We know semi-humanoid robots can be amusing as well as terrifying. C3PO and Marvin the android from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy have distinctly comic moments. But this is not science fiction. A new BBC sitcom sets a high bar for laughs, and Ann Droid stars Diane Morgan (Cunk, Motherland) and Sue Johnston of The Royle Family.
Much of the first episode is bleak. The widowed Sue is lonely, and belittled by an aggressive nurse. Her son (Paul Ready, the useless dad from Motherland) is selfish. Annoying acquaintances tell her to get on with it. The robot Ann (Morgan) has a lot to do to inject some warmth into the scenario.
But of course the robot is played by Diane Morgan, eyes gazing fixedly forward, hamming it up by threatening to play upbeat music, observing flatly that she can see part of Sue’s breast in the bath. She insists on buying her a monoslipper. But when Sue trips over it, Ann calls the ambulance and waits by her hospital bed, ready to take her home.
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Ann listens to Sue when she says she doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life with a robot. And because Ann is played by Morgan, we are tempted to believe a robot can feel purpose, sympathy and compassion.
The pretence is not new, especially now that millions of us are talking to ever-understanding large language models about our fears and hopes and dilemmas. We anthropomorphise ChatGPT, just as we believe our cats love us. The simulacrum can be enough. Kazuo Ishiguro could make us feel empathy for a robot in Klara and the Sun. But how funny is it?
That’s the problem. Morgan’s expressionless attempts at empathy are mildly touching, but in the first episode, at least – only one was available to preview – the robot-human rapport doesn’t lend itself to gags. The writers get some easy laughs at the expense of a prurient elderly woman and a man desperate to get out of hospital. Perhaps Ann will blurt out embarrassing secrets in front of her owner, or reject the advances of a lecherous elderly neighbour. At some point, she may be upgraded and acquire entertaining new features. Morgan will carry it off well.
But although we know she is being played by a woman, there is too much of the uncanny valley about Ann Droid. The characters are playing people accustomed to care robots. The audience, who are not, feel the oddness.
Even more unsettling is the premise of the series: that a robot could be preferable to a human carer. Ann Droid explains that human carers are too expensive. Is the presence of an animatronic doll without volition so much worse?
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At several moments during this episode, I had to remind myself that I was supposed to be watching a sitcom. Existential questions about the viability of social care are not its remit, any more than Fawlty Towers was a meditation on the postwar Anglo-German relationship or whether some hotels ought to be shut down.
The viewer wants a break from worrying about the state of society – or at least a way of laughing away some of our fears about the pace of change – but Ann Droid is disturbing enough to force these intrusive thoughts to the front of our minds.
This strange and melancholy piece of work might just keep you awake at night. Ann, of course, never sleeps. She waits in the spare room and listens for signs of frailty.
Ann Droid is on BBC iPlayer
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