By the time you understand what has been taken, you need permission to ask for it back.

Your wages are held pending verification. Your employer is advised to restrict your access. The evidence you submit against the system becomes evidence that you need closer supervision. Every attempt to challenge your classification makes it harder to escape.

Across four episodes, Rab Mulholland’s dark dystopian thriller follows people trying to expose an AI-enabled machinery of control spreading through the institutions they depend on. Proof should give them a way to fight back. Instead, the machinery absorbs it, classifies the people who gathered it and teaches everyone watching what resistance will cost.

But exclusion is only the beginning. The system offers relief from fear, uncertainty and the exhausting burden of deciding for yourself. It learns to shape what people believe, what they feel and which doubts they can bear to leave unresolved.

By the final episode, Aftermath, the question reaches beyond whether the truth can survive. It asks what remains of a human being when judgement itself has been handed over; and whether anyone still wants it back.

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