Brave New World

In a future society based on pleasure without moral worries, love is prohibited but casual sex, now called ‘engaging’, is strongly encouraged.  Everyone is kept ‘happy’ with a legal drug, soma.  People are hatched and cloned on conveyor belts to meet the requirements of five different social classes, from ruling Alphas to robot-like Epsilons.  Bernard Marx is a different Alpha male with an inclination to thinking.  He and a girl called Lenina Disney go visit a reservation of ‘savages’ where they meet a handsome young man John and bring him back to ‘civilization’.  John turns out to be the son of the director of the cloning authority, which causes a scandal and makes John a celebrity freak.  John falls in love with Lenina but his desire is ruined by his antiquated sexual morale derived from reading Shakespeare.  John hates the over-social but anti-emotional civilization, asks to be sent to live in isolation, and gets a job as a lighthouse guard.  But even there he can’t forget Lenina or escape his celebrity status…

This 3-hour TV adaptation of the 1932 Aldous Huxley novel is set 600 years in the future.  In this ‘well- ordered’ society, the citizens are required to take mind-controlling drugs, sex without love is compulsory, and test-tube babies are commonplace because of a ban on pregnancy.  Not everybody is satisfied with society’s lack of humanity and feeling; the loudest dissidents are free-thinking poet Heimholtz Watson and brilliant oddball Bernard Marx.  An injection of new ‘old’ ideas are brought in by ‘primitive’ John Savage, who lives on an Indian reservation which still honors 20th century values.  Meanwhile, Linda Lysenko becomes a natural mother – and in so doing becomes a criminal.  In keeping with the style of the original book, the script’s newly-minted characters are given names of “pop-culture icons” (Disney, Maoina, Stalina, and so on).

1998 Version: