Mechanical Souls’ story unfolds throughout the preparation and duration of the wedding at the hotel where the nuptials will take place, centering around 8 main characters. Those characters mix and meet, experiencing the same events but each with a different take on things, building up a common experience from their personal stories.

Mechanical Souls is set in a near-future society where human-like androids have become a part of everyday life. A marker of wealth, they are the ultimate human helper. Aside from that, not much has changed from today to our Mechanical Souls universe. Family dynamics, intergenerational rapports, societal pressures to partner up and marry, and overall questions on ethics remain key drivers in our storyworld. The reason for establishing Mechanical Souls in an alternative future was to displace the familiar, and in doing so, give the viewer enough space to think about the story’s core themes, which parallel our own current day issues. We use the androids in the story to hold a mirror up to our own human behaviour and bring attention to the excesses we are subject to when we think our actions don’t matter, or simply because we think we can get away with things.

The series is inspired by L. P. Lee’s short story “Reflections in a Mechanical Eye,” which is based in South Korea. As
L. P. Lee and Gaëlle Mourre delved deeper into the storyworld, they made the decision to transpose the narrative in a different setting, one that could reflect their own sensibilities as an international team. L. P. Lee has lived in Beijing and Gaëlle in Singapore, and joining forces with French producers and Taiwanese co-producers, the team determined the core themes of the story could be best expressed in Taiwan.