The Iris Affair: ludicrous but enjoyable eight-part tech-drama

Niamh Algar is ‘mesmeric’ as 'maths whizz' Iris

Niamh Algar stars as 'maths whizz' Iris

(Image credit: Sky Original)

“The Iris Affair” is “a delightfully preposterous new thriller” that’s packed with twists, said Lucas Hill-Paul in The Mirror. Made by “Luther” creator Neil Cross, Sky’s new show stars Niamh Algar as Iris, a “maths whizz” and genius codebreaker who completes a cryptic treasure hunt designed by venture capitalist Cameron Beck (Tom Hollander). He is so impressed by her astonishing abilities that he recruits her for a secret task: unlocking “a mind-bogglingly complex set of codes” to gain access to a supercomputer so advanced, it could solve climate change, cure cancer or end world hunger. There’s just one problem: the computer, named “Charlie Big Potatoes”, is fast becoming sentient.

A film with a Bond-franchise budget might just have done this plot justice, said Anita Singh in The Telegraph. Here, however, “we’re operating with the production values of a mid-range car advert, and it all feels a bit lame”. All the usual clichés are deployed, from the strangely attractive “antisocial maths genius” and the wall covered in Post-it notes, to the men who are trained to shoot guns yet keep missing their targets.

Yes, it’s daft and the plot is “needlessly complicated”, said Carol Midgley in The Times. But Hollander is just a wonderful actor: watching him “is rarely time wasted”; and Algar, too, gives “a pretty mesmeric performance” as a woman with a brain “the size of a planet” (of course), whose best attempts at disguises involve wearing coloured contact lenses and popping on a bucket hat. My advice: suspend disbelief, and give it a go.