Critic Reviews

Key for any great sci-fi show, Incorporated’s creators, brothers Alex and David Pastor (“Carriers”), excel at filling in the details of their world.

For fans of speculative fiction, Incorporated will feel familiar. For those who read the news with an eye toward the worst, it might feel inevitable. But even when the central story fails to spark major interest, the world that’s been built is enough to keep us engaged.

The production values are high, the acting efficient, the story teems with twists and turns.

You’ll have to watch the series to really get into its flow. I was impressed by its big-bucks special effects which, for the most part, don’t get in the way of the show’s human element.

Besides the sharp yet paper-thin portrayals, the biggest problem with the show is timing. You look to Incorporated for dystopian fiction that expresses our current anxieties; what you get is fitful resonance that makes you realize it might be too soon for any show to meet that challenge.

Not all of the characters pop, but Incorporated keeps things moving at a smart pace.

While their new show offers a vision of the future that isn’t particularly original, its plot is energetic, and its visuals are sleek and appealingly stylized.

Other parts of Incorporated are less interesting but at least the story is trying hard, and every time it misses a beat (bloody cage fighting on overdrive out in the Red Zone) it does something cool like dream up a service where you pay someone on a loud dirt bike to drive you up 18 flights of stairs in a sketchy Red Zone apartment.

Its dystopian bent is de rigueur, so much so that the series suffers from the other side of that savvy coin--it’s almost indistinguishable from its counterparts.

Although its super-bleak future is nothing new, Incorporated does an above-average job of bringing it all home.