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With Severance having broken through to audiences in a big way — the show has now become the most-watched series on the streaming service, pulling ahead of Ted Lasso with the launch of its second season — you might be wondering, what’s the next obvious move for Apple TV+? The answer is, of course, a new show based on a literary cult series about an unstoppable killer robot that doesn’t fully get feelings and just wants to be left alone to watch soap operas.

Same, Murderbot. Hard same.

The 10-episode first season of Murderbot — based on Martha Wells’ best-selling (and award-winning) book series of the same name — has been announced by Apple for a May 2025 launch, with new episodes running through July. The series, described by the streamer as “a sci-fi thriller/comedy about a self-hacking security construct who is horrified by human emotion, yet drawn to its vulnerable clients,” comes from Chris and Paul Weitz (Prime Video’s Mozart in the Jungle), and stars Alexander Skarsgård in the title role. Skarsgård is also an executive producer alongside David S. Goyer and Keith Levine.

There will be some familiar faces appearing alongside Skarsgård: costars throughout the first season include Sabrina Wu, Akshay Khanna, and David Dastmalchian. Somehow, Dastmalchian’s involvement seems at once inevitable — of course he’d be into this — and like a seal of approval from a trusted source.

The Murderbot series of novels, officially known as The Murderbot Diaries, launched in 2017 with Wells’ first installment, the novella All Systems Red. Three further novellas followed across the next year — Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol, and Exit Strategy — with a full-length novel, Network Strategy, following in 2020. Since then, another novella (2021’s Fugitive Telemetry) and novel (2023’s System Collapse), have been released. The series has won multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards.

The first two episodes of Murderbot will debut on Apple TV+ May 16, with a new episode every week through July 11.

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