Life with LEO(h): Atypical’s New Fiction Podcast About Living With a Sexy Robot

I was primed to be excited about Life with LEO(h) from the moment Atypical posted a casting call. Ask anyone within shouting distance of me, as they’ve all had to politely entertain my energetic discussions of whatever android or sentient AI has captured my heart that week. A sitcom/romcom hybrid about a high-strung human living with an android who radiates horny energy like a sun lamp? I’ll delete every byte of information off my phone to listen to this thing, if need be.

Life with LEO(h) follows Jeanine Bell (voiced by series creator Octavia Bray), a no-nonsense lawyer specializing in robotics intelligence kept on retainer for Penelope Lane (Beth Eyre), owner of Lane Robotics. The first episode opens with a court case in which Bell flawlessly destroys the case of the plaintiff attempting to sue Lane Robotics for releasing a dangerous unit. We learn this far future has strict laws governing what androids can and cannot do, that Lane plays fast and loose with those laws, and Bell continues to work for Lane regardless because the pay rocks. A protagonist in a rom-com who hyper-focuses on their career at the expense of a fulfilling personal life?

Buckle up folks, methinks there’s endearing character growth on the menu. 

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The true hook of the show kicks in when Jeanine finds LEO(h) (Maximilian Koger), a Loving, Empathetic, Optimistic, and (h)elpful android companion prototype in her apartment. He turns out to be a gift from Penelope, sent as thanks for the recent court victory and to spice things up for Jeanine. Apparently Lane Robotics discovered the special sauce to making the perfect robotic romantic partner was the inclusion of free will. A super illegal thing to do.

Staying true to a long tradition upheld by romcom films (back before Gerard Butler killed studio romcoms in 2009), Bray sets up a juicy premise with a potentially dangerous twist: can a programmed being give consent? While most movies play with questions of consent so carelessly one has to say “it was a different time” and turn off the DVD, Life with LEO(h) puts the problem front-row center: What do you do when the person in love with you is programmed to love you? 

This new show has a veritable aural Avengers assembled behind the scenes by Atypical Artists. As any number of sad teens on Tumblr can attest: executive producer, editor, and engineer Lauren Shippen knows her way around handling characters in complicated relationships. The project’s sound designer is podcast veteran Julia Schifini, fresh off creating underwater terrors in Primordial Deep. Then there’s director Shenee Howard’s own work with the phenomenal Fan Wars: The Empire Claps Back, which has had me excited for every Patreon notification since pledging in mid-2019 to get more TECB.

 Read more: The Case for a Star Wars Audio Drama

LEO(h) himself is the key to everything. The show lives or dies by whether the audience falls in love with him, and Maximilian Koger nails delivering loveable LEO(h). His performance walks a razor’s edge between being charming and intentionally tweaking his delivery just enough to mimic the flatness of Google Translate-style artificial speech. All while delivering Bray’s script, which gives LEO(h) the perfect lines to make him hot as hell. He’s smooth as oil when speaking, unfailingly affectionate, and he can’t be left alone for two seconds. The lights are on but nobody’s home.  If you’re in the market for a new fictional crush with the energy of Kronk from The Emperor’s New Groove, do I have an android for you. I’ll even be bold enough to say all signs point to there being explicitly horny fanart and/or AO3 posts about LEO(h) before July. 

The one place Life with LEO(h) comes up short is purely due to it being recorded during quarantine. Quality at-home recordings are quite common, as even evidenced by many characters in episode one. But most of those characters are voiced by VAs like Felix Trench, Julia Schifini, or Josh Rubino who’ve refined their setups over many many gigs before and during lockdown. For all the work Schifini’s sound design does to make the actors sound like they belong in that scene, Bray’s audio for Jeanine does not pass muster on anything other than a car stereo that destroys all nuance with bass and tire noise.

Jeanine has that classic muffled recorded-in-a-box sound heard on many an indie podcast. If anything, the quality of sound design highlights the fact her audio isn’t as crisp as the other actors she’s interacting with. 

A cruel irony for it to happen to the biggest human character in the show, given muffled audio can easily be masked if it’s meant for a synthetic character. As things currently stand, Bray’s performance is great even if her audio is meh. If you listen on a decent pair of headphones or have experience making podcasts, you’ll notice the juxtaposition of her character having reverb added in a larger room while simultaneously sounding like she’s in a closet. It doesn’t damn the show by any means, but if Life with LEO(h) sees a positive enough response to greenlight further production I’d love to see a remastered season one with Bray’s lines re-recorded in a better space. 

Read more: An Atypical Love Story: Lauren Shippen’s “The Infinite Noise”

Audio hiccups aside, the first episode is littered with fantastic performances that should not be missed. Even side characters as simple as a robot android can steal a scene. Near the end of the first episode LEO(h) accidentally claims to know Jeanine’s favorite cocktail, similarly to how he was pre-programmed to know her favorite foods. He doesn’t and makes the next logical move: sample one of every possible cocktail available at the open bar. All the while he vents to Bardroid, a robot bartender stuffed full of preprogrammed generic bartender-responses. It perfectly highlights just how new an android like LEO(h) is to this world while simultaneously playing with the classic “down in the dumps at a bar” trope of, well, most movies ever, let alone romcoms. Bardroid’s cowboy-adjacent drawl with a sprinkling of Schifini’s sound design magic adding a synthesized layer to his voice dares the listener to realize he’s voiced by quarantine pub quiz host and Wooden Overcoats star Felix Trench. 

Life with LEO(h) has a staggeringly good first episode. So good I almost wish it’d eschewed the standard audio fiction-as-television weekly format. I want more of LEO(h), and I want it now. There’s only so many times one can re-listen to the supercut of Margaritas & Donuts without taking a break. I missed out on Octavia Bray’s writing by letting The AM Archives slip by while it was locked in Luminary’s yellow walled garden, but I am automatically on board for whatever podcasting work she pursues after curtains drop on Life with LEO(h)’s final episode. Hopefully in which LEO(h) gets a happy ending. (Note: The AM Archives is now available for free on any podcatcher.)

No, not like that, Atypical Artist’s press kit for the show stresses LWL is safe-for-work and will only delve into “clean but mature jokes.” Unlike me.