Jonathan Brackley's work with Sam Vincent is strongest when ordinary domestic life makes a difficult moral question unavoidable. Humans is thoughtful, unsettling television, held back by a familiar thriller plot that needs patience.
Fi1m perspective
In Humans (2015), artificial people become useful enough for ordinary households to depend on them. Brackley and co-creator Sam Vincent are interested in how readily that usefulness becomes a reason to overlook what they might feel. We found the series unsettling because the wish to carry on being served is so recognisable. The writing pays uncomfortable attention to the people who would rather keep their help than consider what they owe them.
Brackley's partnership with Vincent began with comedy sketches and shorts before the pair moved into drama. They wrote for Spooks from 2010 and became head writers for its final two series, then scripted Spooks: The Greater Good (2015). Humans, adapted from the Swedish series Real Humans, brought their experience of sustained serial storytelling into a domestic setting. Family life gives its questions about technology and identity a practical consequence. These people have come to rely on beings whose status they would rather not examine.
The premise of Humans is not especially new, and the familiar thriller plot is the part that requires patience. The performances help to make its questions about work and personhood worth following, even when the suspense feels routine. Brackley and Vincent's strength here is their willingness to stay with the awkward business of depending on someone considered less deserving of sympathy. The exposition-heavy dialogue of Spooks: The Greater Good points to a less rewarding tendency: explaining the situation when the drama ought to make it clear.
Better (2023), a five-part crime thriller about a corrupt police officer confronting her actions, changes the setting again. Its premise continues the interest in people reluctant to examine their own conduct, without artificial intelligence to complicate the question. Vincent remains central to any judgement of Brackley: the writing discussed here belongs to a partnership, and its successes cannot sensibly be divided between them. Start with Humans, and allow the thriller a little patience; the questions about who does the work deserve the attention.
Biography
Jonathan Brackley is a British television screenwriter and producer. He works in partnership with Sam Vincent; the pair met at school in London in the 1990s and later studied film at university.
They began writing comedy sketches for series including Balls of Steel and The Wrong Door before moving into drama. Brackley and Vincent wrote multiple episodes of the BBC spy series Spooks (2002–2011), serving as head writers for its final two seasons, and wrote the 2015 feature film Spooks: The Greater Good.
The duo created the science-fiction series Humans (2015–2018), an adaptation of the Swedish series Real Humans that aired on Channel 4 and AMC. They later created the crime drama Better (2023) for BBC One.
