The press release for Fox’s new thriller Deep State didn’t pull its punches. “It’s gritty, intense and will leave you questioning everything,” it roared. “And we don’t just mean in the show”. Once upon a time, this assertion might have raised an eyebrow. But in 2018, so what? The hard stuff isn’t post-watershed any more. If you like your high-octane, labyrinthine espionage and conspiracy thrills in concentrated form, why not just watch the news? That way, the teeth-gritting tension comes with a visceral side order of reality too.

It isn’t fair to single out Deep State for specific criticism. On the evidence of its opening episode, it’s likely to be expertly constructed, convincingly performed, reasonably involving, if mildly generic fare. Mark Strong does his wary, wounded alpha male thing to perfection as Max Easton, a former MI6 operative bullied out of bucolic retirement in rural France and packed off to Beirut to clean up some lingering, smouldering spy debris. It’s hard to imagine the mission ending well for Max. But the question remains: in a year in which foreign agents are dining on novichok in the Zizzis of provincial England, are his travails going to raise more than a shrug?

Spare a thought for poor old Carrie Mathison too, as she battles not just numerous personal demons but a rising tide of public indifference. Homeland has recently managed what must go down as the greatest feat of reverse-prescience in TV history: the show’s fictional first female president Elizabeth Keane began her term of office in a season beginning just days before Donald Trump’s inauguration. Oops.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Linus Roache as David Wellington and Elizabeth Marvel as President Keane in Homeland Photograph: Antony Platt/SHOWTIME

Gamely, the writers formulated a salvage plan for season seven. Via the assassination attempt that closed the previous series, they’ve transformed Keane into a proto-despotic lunatic. But in the face of reality, it doesn’t really wash. She might be locking up intelligence operatives by the dozen but even so, Keane is Roosevelt, Lincoln and Jed Bartlet all rolled into a saintly paragon of statecraft compared to the real life commander-in-chief. Has Keane endorsed neo-fascists? Backed an alleged paedophile for the senate? Used a speech to some boy scouts as an opportunity for a score-settling ramble more akin to Father Ted’s Golden Cleric address than anything a real, actual president might say? She hasn’t? Then she’s 50 flavours of vanilla and she needs to raise, or perhaps lower her game.

Dark, conspiracy-ridden dramas fulfil an important function. They’re a safe space for our wildest speculations

Arguably, dark, conspiracy-ridden dramas fulfil an important function. They’re a safe space for our wildest speculations, a decompression chamber for our paranoia. The X-Files is an interesting example. If any show epitomised an era during which political scientist Francis Fukuyama was able to posit “the end of history” without being laughed out of academia, it’s Mulder and Scully’s wild goose chase. The 90s now look like a mere pause for breath before the real business of humanity (wars, vicious ideological clashes, terrorism, you know the drill) got underway again. Imagine, in 2018, having enough available mental bandwidth to obsess about the possible existence of aliens? Such decadence.

After 9/11, the show suddenly looked frivolous but at the time, it represented a gentle, controlled ripple on an otherwise calm pond. But the effective operation of this safe space depends on the show in question staying in its box, refusing to venture out of its fictional realm. Otherwise, it simply becomes more fuel to the fire. Might these shows bear a tiny degree of responsibility for our fake news, post-expertise predicament? Have they helped drive the suspicion that nothing is definitively true, that everything solid melts into air?

One of the more alarming yet emblematic revelations of recent times was the news that Vladimir Putin was a fan of House of Cards. This offered a disturbing insight into both Putin’s behaviour and the values he projects onto those involved in top level American politics. But did it also mark a turning point in the relationship between fact and fiction? Previously, fiction was making the running. But now, reality has raced ahead and fiction is playing catchup. Even before Kevin Spacey’s transgressions came to light, House of Cards was losing the race, trailing in the slipstream of Putin and Trump. How can speculative fiction navigate our furthest imaginative reaches when such dark, strange realities are playing out every day?

Deep State continues Thursday on Fox at 9pm