Forest (Nick Offerman) is a know-it-all. That’s not to say that he’s a polymath, or wise, or even especially well-informed. Forest is a tech mogul, and his project is building a computer that uses the principle of determinism — that everything that happens is physically foreordained — to calculate the cause and outcome of any event in the universe. Its function is literally to Know. It. All.

Alex Garland is also a know-it-all. The British science-fictioneer has, as a screenwriter and director, staked out a particular genre of galaxy-brain theater. His films create twists and haunting alternative worlds from hard science and big-think, be it artificial intelligence in “Ex Machina” or bio-horror in “Annihilation.” Garland is concerned with macro forces and the mortals who would master or be mastered by them; he operates at god-level.

The eight-episode “Devs,” which begins Thursday on FX on Hulu, is Garland’s first television series, and he writes and directs it in full. The size has a magnifying effect: It showcases what Garland does well — ideas and atmosphere — while amplifying his weaknesses in character and plot. As the techies say, it scales — for better and for worse.

“Devs” is breathtakingly grand in ideas and ambition. (Less so in content. I’m not convinced the story couldn’t have been told in a two-hour film.) In a few words: Lily (Sonoya Mizuno), an engineer at Forest’s company, Amaya, is drawn into a dangerous intrigue when her boyfriend, Sergei (Karl Glusman), is assigned to the project that gives the series its title, then disappears.