The themes of crisis and collapse along with a clever take on time travel makes it feel very different from conventional sci-fi.

It also features one of the most believable sibling relationships I’ve seen on screen in a while where love and loyalty is mixed with resentment and misunderstanding in appropriate measures. It is refreshing to see a family relationship where both parties make mistakes and unreasonable demands of each other and with the same frequency as positive support; where pettiness mixes with high stakes. At one point Flynn demands her brother leave her room with all the force of countless teenage rows.

After the excellent initial episodes which are more like two feature films than regular television the pacing gets a little uneven with a hillbilly crime element that isn’t as good as Justified or even Sons of Anarchy. The flashbacks into the life of Wolfgang while helping to emphasise how dreadful the collapse was doesn’t really move the story on or help with the flow of the main plotline (and the major feature of Gibson’s fiction I would say is narrative drive).

There was a lot to love about the dark adapted future it portrays. One moment that I felt was really well-observed is when the augmented reality is switched off to reveal how depopulated and damaged London is. Wolfgang/Wilfred explains with a frankness that the illusion of a busier city is for the mental health of the living inhabitants. Later he discusses with his adoptive sister the effect of the implants he wears that supress memories of his real family who, she suggests, were killed in a brutal massacre that he doesn’t actually wish to remember. This are damaged post-humans, almost propped up and made minimally functional by their enhancements rather than cybergods.

Chloe Grace Moretz does the bulk of the heavy lifting on the performance front but Gary Carr and Alexandra Billings also turn in some good work. I also enjoyed JJ Field’s turn as Lev but there was an element of panto to his malevolence so it might not be to everyone’s tastes.

One of the biggest things that makes me want to see a greenlight for more seasons is the cliffhanger of the final episode where as a viewer I wanted confirmation that the sacrifice of the protagonist had been redeemed. It feels like the story is really just getting started.