The offer on the table: a nun tracks down the Holy Grail, and in exchange an omnipotent algorithm agrees to shut itself off.
That single line is the entire elevator pitch for Mrs. Davis, and it tends to either hook you instantly or send you the other direction. Three years later, most viewers never got far enough to find out which camp they fell into.
The 2023 sci-fi class was stacked, and this one got buried
Consider the competition that year. Silo landed on Apple TV. Star Wars widened its universe once more with Ahsoka. The Last of Us debuted its first season and proved a video game adaptation could become appointment television. Second seasons arrived for both Foundation and Loki.
Sci-fi has kept its grip on the entertainment business, and 2023 followed the pattern. Plenty of those titles are still running. Most are still being discussed.
Mrs. Davis is not, and that is what stings.
There’s an uncomfortable reality to how television lodges in our collective memory: a series can pull strong viewership, earn high marks from critics and audiences alike, and still drift out of the conversation inside a couple of years. Maybe you remember it. I certainly do. Neither of us is bringing it up.
What you actually signed up for
Peacock premiered the show on April 20, 2023. The run is eight episodes, created by Tara Hernandez and Damon Lindelof, with Betty Gilpin, Jake McDorman and Andy McQueen leading the cast.
Gilpin’s character is Sister Simone, a nun very much adrift. She is hardly the standard sci-fi lead, and the series is fully aware of that, which is precisely why it wastes no energy defending the choice and moves straight to earning it.
Simone’s life begins to unravel as the human race leans harder and harder on an artificial intelligence named Mrs. Davis. The algorithm develops a particular fixation on her, relaying messages through assorted users in order to reach her. A grudging bargain follows. She goes after the Holy Grail. Mrs. Davis powers herself down.
There isn’t much room in the dystopian sci-fi comedy lane. This show barrels straight down the center of it.
The numbers say people who watched it agreed
Series this odd normally divide viewers down the middle. Either critics adore them while audiences check out, or the reverse plays out. Mrs. Davis managed to sidestep both outcomes, sitting on a 92% critic score at Rotten Tomatoes with the audience score trailing not far behind at 80%.
That’s a narrow gap. Suspiciously narrow, really, for a comedy that pits a devout nun carrying a complicated history against a globe-controlling artificial intelligence and still asks you to buy into the emotional stakes.
Eight episodes. That's the whole thing. One weekend, assuming you’re motivated.
Buried inside it is a woman in a habit bargaining with software over humanity’s future, and she means every syllable.