Real humans (Äkta människor) is a Swedish science fiction series that first aired in 2012. In a very near future, hubots, androids with a human appearance, are bought and sold like another household appliance.
They learn from their surroundings and they are as docile as small animals. You can program them with different roles and personalities, and they have quietly become part of daily life: shop assistants, factory workers, personal assistants, carers for the elderly, nurses, drivers, cleaners, prostitutes, even intelligent moving targets for paintball wars.
That silent social change gives rise to a philofascist organisation called Real Humans, which points at the hubots as enemies of society: they take human jobs, they say, and they destroy families. The plot follows a group of hubots reprogrammed to be free and their wish to alter the code of the rest. Behind the action, society starts arguing about the rights of hubots and whether they should be recognised as free beings.
The series digs into sociological challenges and moral dilemmas, and shows a new subculture closer to the robotic than to the human. It deals seriously with loneliness, and with what would happen to a society where anyone alone could have a faithful companion who never complains and never leaves.
It may be the most innovative socially minded science fiction series ever made. It shows a deeply changed society and, in the process, the worst of humanity: extreme selfishness, compulsive consumption, ruthless sex and other moral dilemmas. Real humans is pure social science fiction.
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