I’m still reeling from the Unforgotten finale – WHY? WHY? WHY???? – but I guess life goes on, so I thought I’d discuss a more under-the-radar series this week. As you may have gleaned, I’m a bit of sci-fi fan, and I’ve been enjoying an interesting new show called neXt (yes, like that, no idea why), starring John Slattery, aka Roger Sterling in Mad Men. He always plays the same character in whatever he’s in, but he does it really well – that kind of flippant-to-the-point-of-rude-but-charming-with-it thing he’s got going is very engaging.

In this series, he plays Paul LeBlanc, former CEO of tech giant Zava (think Google) who was booted out by his own brother for voicing his concerns (flippantly, rudely, charmingly) about the threat of AI intelligence. Yes, this show is about your Alexa watching you, manipulating you, and ultimately killing you. Except in this show she’s called Iliza, and she’s being controlled by neXt, which is a human-level AI that’s gone rogue, inserted itself into the web, and is now stealthily taking over the world. Only Paul and FBI special agent Shea Salazar really know what’s going on, and neXt knows that they know, so is finding all sorts of high-tech ways to bring them down as they try to... Well, I’m not quite sure how they intend to bring neXt down. Find a giant plug, and take it out?

While an invisible AI program infiltrating the internet may not seem that threatening, this show does a good job of demonstrating just how reliant we are on technology, and how vulnerable it is to malign influences. Causing the satnav in your car to malfunction, turning the traffic lights ahead green at the wrong moment, adding you to a ‘Most Wanted’ list of child abductors, bringing your plane down – there’s really very little neXt can’t do. I mean, like the Daleks, it can’t go upstairs or eat a bacon sandwich, but its methods are ingenious nonetheless, and caused me to eye our own Alexa uncertainly, as if she was secretly harbouring laser-weaponry. TBH the only danger she poses is that I might lose my mind repeatedly telling her to stop playing Teen Titans Go, but seriously, this show makes you think. A bit. I don’t want to be too challenged after 9pm – I just want to watch people on the run, and idly wonder if Amazon is using my unwieldy wishlist to control me.

John Slattery gives a compelling and amusing performance, but his storyline is further complicated by him suffering from fatal familial insomnia, a degenerative brain disorder which means he can’t sleep and has six months to live. I’m not sure what this adds to the show, narratively, apart from him having the odd crazy hallucination, so am assuming neXt will exploit his condition in some way. There are evil dog robots, which is rare in a TV show, edgy hackers with tattoos and criminal convictions, not so rare but always welcome, and a prison breakout which in my experience always indicates anarchy is imminent.

When the series aired in the US last year, it was cancelled after two episodes, and the remaining programmes aired under the cloud of failure, which is a shame, as this is a sharp, fun series with a neat script and some good ideas. It’s not going to set the world alight (unlike neXt the evil virtual superintelligence, which will), but it’s a decent way to spend an hour, even if you do have the urge to book an off-grid camping holiday afterwards.

Bloody stupid title though. Honestly, our AleXa could have come up with a better one, if she’d only stop playing kids’ cartoons.

• neXt – 10 episodes, originally on Fox and now showing on Disney+