Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service.Sky’s new thriller mini-series, The Fear Index, follows Dr Alex Hoffman (Josh Hartnett), a maverick computer scientist who has developed an AI system that can anticipate unforeseen fluctuations in the financial market by studying reactions to fear.The Fear Index Season 1 Download
The pioneering algorithm is guided by his theory that people behave in “predictable ways when they’re frightened”; accordingly, it makes projections based on reports in the media that are indicative of, or likely to trigger, global waves of anxiety.But when Hoffman is knocked unconscious during a break-in at his £40mn Geneva mansion one night, his response to the residual feelings of panic is volatile, erratic and violent — in short, anything but predictable. And for all his credentials as a financial soothsayer, not even he could have envisioned the extent to which his own stock as a boss, husband and even as a decent, lawful human being could collapse in just 24 hours.Like its source material, Robert Harris’s bestselling book of the same name, the plot of this four-parter takes place in the day after the home invasion. Incidentally (or so it may seem) it is also the day that Hoffman is due to pitch his shiny new piece of tech to a group of premium investors, and that his artist wife Gabrielle (Leila Farzad) is set to open a new exhibition.Despite avoiding any serious injury in the assault, Alex’s attempts to proceed with this potentially career-defining afternoon are quickly derailed by severe PTSD and a series of cluster headaches that are invariably accompanied by a melodramatically piercing score. Hartnett himself, meanwhile, has little more to do early on than rub his temples intensely and keep his eyes moist and terror-stricken.