The Dead Past [Spoilers]

Does Devs remind anyone else of the Asimov short story 'The Dead Past', in which a scientist attempts to view the past, ostensibly for aacademic reasons, but actually to find out if he was responsible for his daughter's death, due to a mislaid cigarette?

It may have been a different Asimov story, but the motivation seems similar to that of Devs.

There are a number of problems with this show. Like most of Garland's projects, it has a laser-like focus on the truth or key at the heart of the story, with no believable world around it. Few characters actually matter and their existences are only important insofar as they reveal or conceal the central idea. None of them seem real and they are far from interesting or entertaining. It is a highly mechanistic show and once the purpose of the technology is revealed, it all becomes rather boring.

There is also little drama or complexity. We know from the start that the boy was murdered, the girl is all good and the Offerman character is evil. No curiosity is warranted. Past episode 4, there is nothing to discover and the episodes seem unnecessarily drawn out.

There's an unfortunate tendancy to feminise the world of the story. Given the setting, 20% of the characters would be female, but here about 50% are. I'm not one to whinge about political correctness, but this seems forced and unrealistic. Men can also make sympathetic characters.