It's a prequel to Battlestar Galactica. I never watched all that much of that series, but prequels mean there's no necessary knowledge to concern myself with. Basically it's set some time in the future in these twelve colonies.

I'm not the best at explaining, so I'll link you to this (http://www.syfy.com/caprica/about.php). The show's visually stunning and that's part of what I've so thoroughly enjoyed about it. A lot of television shows don't feel like they have the cinematic quality of a film, but Caprica does. It's heavy on symbolism and beautiful nonsense sort of settings, because they have vivid online worlds to play around in.

As for characters themselves it's interesting to find the struggle of artificial intelligence just as compelling (if not more so) than that of the flesh-and-blood individuals. You basically see the events which lead to the creation of a robotic race that decides that ultimately, humans are irredeemable and should be erradicated. The second season's been pretty good so far, and I don't miss it if I have any say in the matter.