• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, May 5, 2020

Heaven is merely a mouse click away in the new Amazon Prime series called “Upload.”

The problem is, this particular version of heaven is not altogether heavenly. And that might be because it is not positioned specifically in the marketing materials as heaven per se, even if it does offer prospective customers an attractive vision of a deluxe digital afterlife.

But heaven? Not exactly, learns this show’s protagonist, a young man named Nathan (played by Robbie Amell).  

Nathan becomes a somewhat reluctant new resident of digital heaven after he suddenly dies in the ultimate tech-era mishap -- a fatal smash-up following a software glitch in the operating system of the driverless car in which he is riding.

While being rolled down a hospital hallway on a gurney, and being told he will die at any moment, Nathan is more or less forced to sign a bunch of papers full of words that he will have no opportunity to read. In this way, he rather carelessly signs his afterlife away. The large print giveth and the small print taketh away, right?

The place where he ends up might be purgatory. Or you might call it “heaven lite.” The ad copy positions it this way: “The best years of your life could be when it’s over.” 

This is part of the advertising and promotional materials for a virtual posthumous destination called Lakeview, one of a variety of such places managed by a tech company called Horizen. 

That’s Nathan in the photo above taking in the view from the balcony of his new home in this sprawling mountain facility. In a nice touch, the producers have used the very real Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, N.Y. as their exterior stand-in for the fictional Lakeview.

The marketing is not unlike the kind of effort you would see in the real world for a retirement community -- only this is a place for post-retirement where one is supposed to “live” forever.

Although the time frame of “Upload” is not specified, it appears to be in the reasonably near future -- perhaps the mid- to late-2020s. This near-future world is rendered with great care. It seems as if it has evolved seamlessly from our own. We recognize it instantly, and then again, we do not.

The prime mover behind “Upload” is Greg Daniels, a show creator and executive producer associated with top-of-the-line comedy hits such as “The Office” (the U.S. version), “Parks & Recreation” and perhaps most notably, “King of the Hill,” one of the smartest TV comedies ever made.

Although “Upload” takes a decidedly lighthearted look at its subject matter, this show somehow manages to make a number of serious observations about our high-tech world and where it is going. 

“Upload” raises intriguing questions about immortality and life (both real and virtual). In this show, a person’s “soul” is really the sum total of the data that has been collected by others about him.

It is from this data pile that Horizen rebuilds each person into a virtual version of his- or herself. In this way, the virtual afterlife the company promises is not that much different from the life each person was living in real life in the first place.

Among other things, before he perishes in that car crash, Nathan is seen in a supermarket where he is bombarded by advertising messages tailored especially for him, since everything he has ever done or bought in his life has been collected in a huge database that appears to be entirely available to anyone who wishes to use it to sell him things.

In fact, this is one of the aspects of Lakeview that is less than heavenly: Marketers of well-known brands still want his money -- from the man peddling Orbit chewing gum in the Lakeview lobby to the sodas and salty snacks he has to pay for in his room’s minibar.

“Upload” is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video.