Westworld is a hit. Viewing figures released this week confirmed that the first season of HBO’s sci-fi western drama received a bigger audience than any other debut in the channel’s history. The same applies in the UK with Sky Atlantic. In the past seven days Westworld has been nominated at the Writers Guild of America awards, with Golden Globes sure to follow. Its 10-episode run has been marked by an endless stream of online conversation and content.

By any definition it has gone well. But I’d go further and say that Westworld is the defining piece of TV in 2016. Game of Thones may be a bigger phenomenon. Bake Off may have gripped Britain as it looked for a post-Brexit hug. But no other show, intentionally or otherwise, seems to me to have been so markedly a product of its time. (Ok, maybe the news.)

The most obviously relevant aspect is the subject matter. When even the Daily Mail run a front page warning of the dangers of a robot revolution, you know it’s no longer a niche concern. Westworld details the travails of a number of robotic “hosts” whose job is to pleasure human guests in a Wild West theme park. As the humans subject them to barbaric acts, the robots begin to develop signs of consciousness. The humans are too confident in their own abilities to realise the trouble that’s round the corner. The robots, meanwhile, must come to terms with sentience. What does it mean to be “human” anyway?

What does it mean to be ‘human’ anyway? … hosts Maeve, Hector and Armistice with Felix. Photograph: HBO

The thematic content of Westworld doesn’t run too deep. Full of highfalutin references (“I think it was Oppenheimer who said ...”) without actually telling you much, the dialogue can sometimes feel like a speech by Boris Johnson. The key takeaway seems to be that only suffering makes you alive, which is a pretty bleak conclusion and should never be shared with newlyweds. In truth, you learn less about the ramifications of an android attaining consciousness in the 10 and a half hours of this drama than you do in the 90 minutes of Alex Garland’s film Ex Machina. But in 2016, being light on substance is hardly a barrier to relevance.

Where Westworld really connected with its audience was through its style. An explosion of fan commentary, especially on Reddit, was provoked by creators via their use of clever techniques. The camera would linger on apparently innocuous details for a fraction too long. Lines would be delivered in so portentous a fashion that they had to mean something (“Forgive me, but I know that the death of your son Charlie still weighs heavily on you …”) Producer Jonathan Nolan – brother of Christopher – told Entertainment Weekly that “part of the fun is people speculating about what they are seeing”. He added that some things in Westworld are “intentionally ambiguous”.

‘Intentionally ambiguous’ … fans couldn’t help theorise about characters like Bernard. Photograph: HBO/2016 Home Box Office, Inc. All

The producers deliberately reached out to an audience that enjoys obsessing. They knew some fans would watch the show again and again on their laptops. They knew they would freeze-frame the screen and zoom in on details that would pass the casual viewer by. From there the fans would try to make connections, to unravel the mysteries, to find deeper meaning. Things were left uncertain enough that people could believe what they wanted. Whether a theory was “true” was less important than the fact that someone believed in it. Sound familiar?

I’m not calling HBO a purveyor of fake news, and neither am I suggesting that Westworld has been captured by the alt-right like Pepe the Frog. But the drama has certainly tapped into an audience of young people who love video games and cracking codes, and understands both technology and identity politics. As a side note, that same part of the audience ended up rowing on the Guardian’s series blog with the other part of the audience who find the characters unrelatable and the slow pace a bit boring. The latter group are offended, the former group feels patronised. And there appears to be no reconciling the two.

Women are objectified, sexualised and subjected consistently to violence … Maeve and Clementine at the Mariposa brothel. Photograph: HBO/2016 Home Box Office, Inc. All

There are other aspects of Westworld which I feel are absolutely contemporary albeit less easy to enjoy. There’s the endless violence, to which all protagonists are apparently desensitized. There’s a complete absence of humour. Characters are largely cynical and stern. Women are objectified, sexualised and subjected consistently to violent acts. For balance, I must acknowledge that there’s the odd six-pack and flaccid penis in there too.

A violent, amoral but ambiguous parable that’s pored over by an online fandom looking for hidden meaning. If that isn’t a show for our times, I don’t know what is. To cap it off, Nolan this week said that the unifying idea of Westworld’s first season had been “control” (though not necessarily the taking back thereof). Season two is expected in 2018. Nolan says it will be defined by “chaos”. The way things are going, that seems about right.