The Iris Affair

Helmed by Luther creator Neil Cross, eight-part drama The Iris Affair serves up a sun-drenched theme park ride across the Italian coast, packed with ludicrous twists, delicious scenery chewing and even a healthy helping of existential dread.

Niamh Algar (Playing Nice) is enthrallingly steely as genius heroine Iris Nixon, a maths whizz and puzzle obsessive who completes a cryptic treasure hunt across the globe designed by wealthy investor Cameron Beck (played by Tom Hollander, doing most of the aforementioned chewing), wiping the floor with the world’s leading thinkers by beating them to the finish line by several days.

Her savant levels of brilliance make her the perfect candidate for the secret task waiting for her at the end of the globe-trotting puzzle: unlocking a mind-bogglingly complex set of codes to access a dormant, uber-advanced supercomputer packed with artificial intelligence so smart it could solve world hunger, stop climate change and cure cancer in an afternoon with enough thinking juice left over to compose a symphony in its lunch hour.

The only problem? The creator of ‘Charlie Big Potatoes’, as the computer’s affectionately called (“because he’s not small potatoes, is he?”), Jensen Lind (Kristofer Hivju) is currently catatonic after suffering a nervous breakdown when he realises that letting the smartest AI ever conceived run rampant might not be the best solution to humanity’s ails.

Thus, Iris nabs Charlie’s novel-length password and goes into hiding to figure out the last pages, conveniently picking the idyllic Mediterranean island of Sardinia with miles of gorgeous sandy beaches in her back garden and an Italian lover, Teo (Lorenzo de Moor), who’s as hunky as he is oblivious, at her disposal as her secret base.

It’s a convoluted set up to what ultimately, and predictably, becomes an eight-hour chase sequence across the Italian coastline as Iris dodges mercenaries, corrupt cops and megalomaniacal finance bros to try and determine whether or not the future of humanity might be at stake.

Any attempts to parallel the conflict over turning Charlie back on into the current complexities around the future of AI should be abandoned quickly. This is not a particularly smart series and, one would hope, Cross knows it. While it certainly plays on audiences’ fears about the rapid advancement of technology, the actual stakes and potential consequences remain ethereal throughout and are essentially just scaffolding as an excuse to run around Italy causing havoc.

Algar in particular is clearly having a great time getting into scraps, setting booby traps and blowing up cars, while Hollander portrays his slimiest character since his definitive Mr Collins in 2005’s Pride & Prejudice. His Beck begins as a loquaciously charismatic optimist for about five minutes before his true motivations are revealed and he settles into smarmy Bond villain mode.

On paper, The Iris Affair is about as formulaic as it gets, but magnetic performances from Algar and Hollander sell it, for the most part, while Cross’s dialogue is sharp and hilarious, if a little lofty.

It becomes quite clear from the opening episode that we’re dealing with characters who have never stepped one toe in the real world when Iris, in the guise of a maths and science tutor for privileged youngster Joy (Meréana Tomlinson), puts a knife to her throat to demonstrate the multiverse theory.

The action is competently staged and Algar, who is in almost every scene, is more than compelling enough to justify the investment. It may leave viewers scratching their heads, but this baffling sci-fi-adjacent thriller is just about entertaining enough to get away with it. Here’s to an even bigger and stupider second season.