It’s fair to say that when Babylon debuted earlier this year with a feature-length episode directed by Danny Boyle it came in for a bit of stick. In truth it was a mess, jumping from the absurdly cartoonish to the grimly serious at a moments notice. Television has never been a director’s medium though, and now that Boyle’s given up the reins the show actually seems to be a lot more sure of itself.

Brit Marling stars as PR Wunderkind, Liz Garvey – she understands Twitter the way Mozart understood a pianoforte. She’s the voice of the future and she’s been headhunted to drag the Metropolitan Police Service kicking and screaming into the Information Age. What a shame then that the Met is a creaking dinosaur of an institution that stumbles from one scandal to another – it seems that art really does imitate life. Heading up the whole thing is Commissioner Miller – James Nesbitt, fresh from Middle Earth. Nesbitt excels as a man trying his best to restrain the seething volcano of rage he’s sitting on, and the one time the mask does slip has more than a little of the Malcolm Tucker about it. Remote from the top brass, yet in no way any less important, are the meatheads of the Armed Response Unit and the average bobby of the Territorial Support Group, who seem intent on undermining the “brand” with every monumental cock-up.

For Armstrong and Bain, the writing team behind Fresh Meat and Peep Show, this is new ground. They’ve had to find the balance between their usual comedic flair and dealing with their subject matter seriously. When a prison riot leads to the Met being called in to deal with a hostage situation, the issues are politically, socially and personally far-reaching, but the writers still manage to pry out the absurd mundanity of the situation. One officer mentions that Joey Barton has offered his services as a mediator, and the press are quick to jump on the weakness of the police in giving into the hostage-takers’ demands for pizza. Such idiosyncrasies could be jarring, but instead draw out the mundane reality of the world, something that Peep Show excels at. It’s not only funny, it’s humanising.

High praise indeed. To give the Met, a monolith of institutionalised racism and one of the most (rightly) reviled institutions in the country, humanity is impressive. But Babylon stops short of excusing its characters. When one young officer rages against the demonisation of the average police officer on the street by the press, you can’t help but feel a twinge of sympathy – but should you? Recent events in Ferguson have shown us that our law enforcement services need to be under constant scrutiny, and thanks to social media and citizen journalism, it’s never been easier to hold the police to account. This is where Babylon carves out its niche. Like The Thick of It, Babylon isn’t simply a satire of a British institution; it poses the questions, how can we hold the powers to be to account? And how do we want to be governed?

Benjamin Cook