Actor Guy Burnet has said the dystopian world depicted in his new show is “not far fetched in any way”.
The Feed is set in the near future, where people’s brains are directly connected to a feed where every emotion, interaction and memory can be shared instantly.
The former Hollyoaks star told the PA news agency: “This is not a cliched scary horror, actually this is not some radical hypothesis, this could happen, this is probably going to, at some stage, be our lives.
The world premiere of #TheFeed airs tonight at 9pm on our Ultra HD channel (999) 🤩 David Thewlis, Guy Burnet and Michelle Fairley star in this chilling futuristic thriller 🍿
— Virgin Media (@virginmedia) September 16, 2019
“A lot of stuff that we have today, if we told people five years ago they would be like ‘Oh my god no what do you mean?’”
He added: “I think it’s normal to be scared of that. Doing this I heard loads of podcasts and read a couple of things and it’s interesting that the consensus is we are past the time where we can control it, that we have gone past that time.
“At least that is according to Elon Musk and a couple of people who are far smarter than I am.
“But listening to them, they are adamant that you go along with it or we can’t survive as a species and that in itself is scary.
When almost everyone's implanted a piece of new technology into their brain… what could go wrong? 🤔
📺 Catch our brand new dystopian drama #TheFeed TONIGHT at 9pm on Virgin TV Ultra HD (Ch. 999) or Virgin TV On Demand. 📺 pic.twitter.com/uK1KmAEn2B
— Studio Lambert (@studiolambert) September 16, 2019
“There are aspects that are important, the advancement in medicine, but it’s the balance and how ethically do you control it and at what point is it that AI is more advanced than we are, then we are not really needed.”
Burnet – who has also appeared in the TV dramas The Affair and Ray Donovan – said he was gratified by comparisons of the show to Black Mirror, Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones’ sci-fi anthology show, adding: “If you’re going to compare it to a show it would be that, it’s just an elongated version of one of the episodes, let’s say, which I think is a great show.
“I think what is interesting with ours is that there is a technology that is coming out this year that is The Feed, called the Neuralink (which connects human brains to computers).
“Elon Musk has it and this is going to be available for us and this is now, this is not far fetched in any way.”
The Feed is on Virgin TV Ultra HD channel at 9pm on Mondays.