Westworld is based on a 1970s movie by Michael Crichton, about a crazy theme park where the engineered creations run amuck. I'll bet you didn't know he did two of those - I didn't! Instead of Jurassic Park's dinosaurs, Westworld is a recreation of the Wild West, and apparently Rome and medieval times, although so far these have only been given the barest of nods in the tv series. Westworld the tv show so far is set in the future, when corporate high rollers can afford to visit this Disneyland of the Wild West, staffed entirely by biologically engineered androids who think that they are actually living there, and that the visitors are "newcomers".
Westworld is produced by JJ Abrams, which of course will immediately make you think - Lost! And it does have some things in common with Lost, namely, a self-contained island world seemingly filled with mysteries that we're offered small glimpses of, and which we hope will be solved by the end of the series, and not be 'solved' by a final season leading up to, "They were dead all along, and the afterlife is just pretty whack."
I think, though, that it has more in common with Joss Whedon's short lived show, Dollhouse. Like Dollhouse, it centers around a girl who basically serves as a projection for whatever scenario that her handlers and their customers would like to play out - in this case, she is a ranch hand's daughter. She is slowly gaining a sense of self and memory, but has to disguise this from her handlers, who see her as less than human (in this case, because she is an android). Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) is clearly the modern-day Echo, while her friend Thandie Newton, named Maeve in this show, serves as this show's Priya/Sierra.
HBO has a much better track record than Fox with telling a cohesive, ongoing story, and not cancelling all of their genre shows, so I have high hopes for this show, which mixes futuristic android biotech with the Old West, has a player piano that unobtrusively plays classical versions of Nine Inch Nails and SoundGarden, and boasts a killer cast - besides the two already mentioned, we have Anthony Hopkins as the park owner, Ed Harris as a mysterious Man in Black (this one would be right at home in Stephen King's Gunslinger world, although whether he is Roland or Flagg remains to be seen) and Mary from Psych (Jimmi Simpson) really coming into his own with a great part as a white hat cowboy who is finding out how his ethics play out in the Wild West.
