New Amazon Series by Creator Greg Daniels Resemble Life Today

Over the past two days I found a treasure! I watched one of the most exciting, innovating and so relatable in these times series - Amazon Prime's Original Series - Upload. If you haven’t watched the series yet, I recommend you head to Amazon Prime and you do so fast!

Finding Upload was like finding a rare diamond in a dessert. I was hopelessly scrolling through Netflix only to be disappointed that not only there isn’t anything new but there is also nothing really interesting, exciting or worth my time watching. I guess Netflix has lost its spark for me. This is where Amazon Prime comes in and takes over as Netflix’s main competitor with their completely different and unique series Upload - it is nothing like you have ever seen before! The episodes are not only easy and quick to watch but you can finish Season 1 in less than two days, and literally begging for Season 2 to be made already.

But this is the best part - Upload was created and written by Greg Daniels who also created The Office, Parks and Recreation and King of the Hill. I was a huge fan of The Office anyway and adding the bonus that Daniels created the series, I got my perfect match! The new show is so much more shocking and surprising that surpasses everything Daniels did so far on a much bigger scale, even a planet…

OK... so what is all this the fuss about? Well, if you love sci-fi, comedy, crime and drama all in one you found your match made in heaven! Not to give out spoilers but Upload is set in 2033 and it follows the life of Nathan (Robbie Amell) who dies in a mysterious self-driving car accident and ends up in a highly elite "digital heaven" where your subconsciousness is extracted and placed in a virtual world, if you have the money to pay for it of course. There he meets his customer representative “angel” Nora (Andy Allo), whom he develops strong feelings for as she helps him find out the mystery around his death. That’s right - in these series it is all about technology and love - from self-driving cars to digital heaven to virtual iPhones, and long-distance dead/alive relationships.

What I found particularly awesome in the series is the originality. From the setting to the story line to the execution and acting. In my book, it was all superb and I give it a 10 out of 10!

I was shocked to see elements in the series that totally imitate life today - life resembling art. You can see people wearing face masks like we do today, one of the main characters is sick from “lung vaping,” and some of the characters are in isolation like we are today only able to FaceTime with their loved ones. You can see people paying to live in an after-life "digital heaven," self-driving cars and advancements in technology we see today and some forthcoming in the not so distant future. As the idea of brain chips, chipping and humans connecting with technology on a more intimate level is talked about, explored and even offered today, the series puts the question of how far are humans willing to go and advance technologically in order to gain money and an after life?

Mind you, according to several interviews I read with Daniels about the accuracy in the predictions in his show that match today’s world, he shares that it was all “coincidental”... but was it? How could he have guessed so accurately the world today twenty years ago when he started developing the idea for the series? According to Fast Company, he started developing the idea for the series in 1980 while he was still writing for SNL and in 2014 he wrote the pilot to be pitched. The series was filmed last year in Canada and Amazon had decided to give the series a go in 2017 followed by pitch execution and development in 2018. It simply blows my mind how this timeline works!

Upload also explores the gap between the rich and the poor even in a digitally advanced technology. If you are rich you can buy yourself the Lakeview virtual heaven and if you are poor you end up either dead or in the 2G digital heaven only to freeze if you run out of storage. You can only unfreeze if a living person pays for you to have extra storage data to “live.” Yeah...lots to think about and digest in the show.

Let’s not forget the love story between the dead Nathan and the living Nora. So unique and so beautiful it gave me chills! The way they fell in love, the setting, the characters, the emotions - all too perfect and real for me. Loved it!

So what are you waiting for? If you haven’t started watching it yet - it’s time. This is by far the most original series that I have seen come out after Netflix's Stranger Things.