Sleek, sexy Brave New World is the crown jewel in Peacock’s launch offerings

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  Welcome to New London, a utopian society where everybody knows their place. [credit: YouTube/NBC Peacock ]

A savage man ignites chaos in a seemingly perfect utopian society in Brave New World, the flagship original series on NBC's Peacock streaming service, which launches today. It's an adaptation of Aldous Huxley's classic dystopian novel of the same name, suitably updated for these 21st century times. This Brave New World is a sleek, sexy, and ambitious series with strong performances and impressive CGI that feels more akin to Westworld than Huxley's novel, particularly in its philosophical underpinnings. And ultimately it provides an engrossing story of the pain of love and the human condition.

(Some spoilers below, but no major reveals.)

The novel Brave New World is set in the year 2540, in the World State city of London, where people are born in artificial wombs and indoctrinated through "sleep-learning" to fit into their assigned predetermined caste. Citizens regularly consume a drug called soma (part anti-depressant, part hallucinogen) to keep them docile and help them conform to strict social laws. Promiscuity is encouraged, but pregnancy (for women) is a cause for shame. Needless to say, both art and science (albeit to a lesser extent) are viewed with suspicion.

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