David Farnor | On 10, Feb 2022

Josh Hartnett. That name was all the rage in the early 2000s, when the Black Hawk Down star appeared in rom-coms, thrillers, Shakespearean dramas and noir-tinged dramas, all within a couple of years of each other. Then, he disappeared from our screens, only resurfacing a long time later in Sky Atlantic’s Penny Dreadful, in which his turn as an American lone wolf in London almost stole the whole show. Now, he brings that simmering intensity to the screen once again in The Fear Index, a four-part financial thriller that deservedly gives him a leading role.

Hartnett plays Alex Hoffman, a scientist and entrepreneur who has programmed an algorithm to predict market trends faster than a human being can. “Humans act in predictable ways when they are frightened,” he tells the investors looking to put their money into his company’s computer-driven fund – and that’s the edge his machine has over competitors, as Hoffman has worked out that fear is the most powerful emotion humans feel, a constant that drives behaviour in ways that are rapid and repetitive. The result is a fast-learning piece of artificial intelligence that can use that to its advantage, making millions in minutes for Hoffman’s firm.

He’s joined in this venture by Hugo (Four Lions’ breakout Arsher Ali), the cash cow to Hoffman’s brain trust and the guy who cares less about how the money is made and more about how much of it there is. But as they launch their product to a select group of loyal clients, things start to go wrong. The algorithm starts to make unexpected trades, moments ahead of major disasters, making lots of profit but leaving everyone in the room uncomfortable about the ethics of their success and unsure whether the computer is predicting world events accurately or maybe even somehow causing them.

It’s a richly compelling question that has only become more prescient since Robert Harris’ book on which this is based was published back in 2011. Surrounded by code that hoovers up our data and uses it to personalise experiences and retain our attention, all in the name of advertising and revenue, our digital age pitches us head-first into a dizzying quandary of morals and commerce. The script doesn’t manage to delve into those dilemmas with as much depth as, say, Billions, but that’s partly because The Fear Index is trying to tell a more insular story than that – this cyberthriller is a psychological drama that zeroes in on one person’s suspicion that they may be responsible for something bad.

The Jurassic Park principle of could-but-didn’t-think-about-should is in full play here, and director David Caffett (The Alienist) uses that to calculate an atmosphere of increasing claustrophobia and uncertainty, juxtaposed with the constants of Alex’s grounded wife, Gabby (Leila Farzad), and Arsher Ali’s permanently oily salesman. The show takes a while to set the stage, with the pace impacted by a reliance on technical jargon, but once it gets going, the excellent Josh Hartnett is the key to the equation’s success, bringing a beating heart to the crumbling world of a man afraid that he’s created a monster – and, most chilling of all, one that could predict his own reactions to that growing fear. The result is an occasionally melodramatic but entertaining ride, and infallible proof that Harnett should get leading roles more often.

 

The Fear Index is available on Sky Atlantic. Don’t have Sky? You can also stream it on NOW, for £9.99 a month with no contract. For the latest Sky TV packages and prices, click the button below.

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