Think of sci-fi habitats and you might think of spaceships – of Ash going berserk on the Nostromo in Alien. You might think of dystopias – of Blade Runner’s rain-drenched, neon-soaked Los Angeles. You might even think of the pristine New Jersey futurescape of AI, and that bit where Haley Joel Osment’s face melts on to a dinner table. One place you probably don’t think of is Gerrards Cross. Yet London’s commuter belt now doubles as the set of Humans, a new eight-part drama series from Channel 4 and AMC. On the day the Guide comes to visit, the very first thing we see is a body bundled from a car boot into a detached family house. And that body is oozing blue-green goo...

Based on a hit Swedish series, Humans is set in a parallel present where, for better or worse, fully developed artificial intelligence has come to pass. Like the vampires in True Blood, artificial humans (or “synths”) are a shakily integrated, partially accepted element of society. Used as factory workers, carers and ticket inspectors, they’re marketed to the public like a second family car: luxury items costing around 20 grand, payable in instalments and fully customisable. Joe (owner of the aforementioned family home, played by Tom Goodman-Hill), has bought Anita (Gemma Chan) to take on the household chores. She’s supposed to allow the family to spend more time together, but as Anita begins to form bonds with the children, their mother Laura (Katherine Parkinson) is left threatened and fretful; and that’s before this synth starts displaying behavioural tics that definitely aren’t fitted as standard.

With the crew starting to film some spoiler-heavy scenes, I am shut in the bedroom of Joe and Laura’s teenage daughter, Mattie (Lucy Carless). On the floor, there’s a copy of console classic The Sims and a DVD of the Will Smith clunker I, Robot. On the wall, meanwhile, there’s a portrait of René Descartes. This odd collection of artefacts gives a pointer to the nature of this series: Humans is part domestic melodrama, part thriller and part philosophical headscratcher.

Perhaps the series’ greatest strength, though, is the way it deals with genre. There’s little that’s less impressive than the future done on the cheap, as anyone who’s idled away the early hours watching SyFy knows, but this series plays its hand carefully, giving a lot less away than the Swedish original, which made the human-robot interface instantly adversarial. Here, the relationships are nuanced and cautiously symbiotic. The soundtrack, by Cristobal Tapia de Veer, proves as crucial an adornment as his work on Utopia, applying shards of colour, clarity and mystery to housebound sequences that might otherwise feel weighed down by the carefully maintained suburban drabness. And, frankly, “synth” is a way cooler soubriquet for android than “replicant”.

Frankly, ‘synth’ is a way cooler soubriquet for android than ‘replicant’

Sam Vincent and Jon Brackley, the writers behind Humans, are perching awkwardly on Mattie’s bed, explaining how they pushed the original story into “slightly darker corners”. “It’s easy to get bogged down in mythology in a sci-fi show,” says Brackley. “A domestic setting gives us scope to explore the ideas from a lot of different viewpoints.”

“Thirty years ago,” continues Vincent, who met Brackley when the pair worked on Spooks, “computers were in the workplace, then in our homes, and now in our pockets. There’s only one way this technology is moving, and that’s into us.”

Another person joins us in our bedroom: Colin Morgan, who plays Leo, a mysterious freedom fighter on the hunt for a missing synth. The android might be on the black market or, worse, in the hands of “human rights” campaigners who object to robots putting people out of work, making mothers feel inadequate, and causing kids to wonder whether education is worth the bother. Leo is the main source of action in the drama and, Morgan says, “He doesn’t have a lot of fun. I don’t know if you ever see him smile and he spends a lot of time out in cold, dingy places. He’s got a complicated past, he’s on a very personal and public mission but, if he succeeds, it could change the world.”

Friends are electric: Joe Hawkins (Tom Goodman-Hill) goes shopping for a cyber-bargain. Photograph: Des Willie/Kudos

As for the philosophical stuff, that’s unquestionably the domain of Humans’ resident Hollywood star, William Hurt. Hurt plays George Millican, a widower who clings on to his ancient, malfunctioning synth Odi (Will Tudor, Olyvar from Game Of Thrones) for companionship but also for the memories he retains of life with his late wife. Today, the Oscar winner is in an almost unquotably cerebral mood. He talks about Isaac Asimov (an inspiration explicitly acknowledged within the show) and the transition from humaneness to human-ness, from consciousness to conscience. It’s sometimes hard to tell whether he’s on the road to enlightenment or in Pseuds Corner.

“No matter how colloquial the trappings may be,” Hurt says, “this [technology] is about the essentials, about who we want to be. It’s a function of the group consensus of humanity to create this thing. We have to aspire to it because it’s our causeway to the future. You can’t exaggerate its importance. It’s as essential to the future as surviving global warming or anything else. But you can really screw it up.”

It’s this preoccupation that has ensured the themes of Humans are seldom out of the news these days. Mainstream cinema laid the groundwork with Her and Ex Machina, while Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates and Elon Musk have been firing off bulletins from the tech frontline, warning darkly of the risks of computer sentience, while machines apparently pass the Turing Test (which gauges artificial intelligence) and a Japanese hotel staffed exclusively by robots opens. The technology isn’t around the corner: it’s here.

Of course, conceptual acuity and clever writing count for little in a TV drama without performance, and much rests on the shoulders of the 32-year-old Chan. Not for nothing does Goodman-Hill describe the process of acting opposite her as “mindfuckingly strange”. Chan’s performance is truly unsettling, evoking the automated sensitivity and pre-programmed empathy of Jeremy Hunt. Her dedication to the part even infected her fellow cast members, as they began to unconsciously mimic the perfect posture and smooth movements of her synth. All 70 actors playing synths took classes with physical-theatre expert and choreographer Dan O’Neill. “Synth school” eschewed more traditional, herky-jerky C3PO-isms in search of grace and sleekness. Peter Crouch would likely not have graduated.

Robo soul: William Hurt as George Millican in Humans. Photograph: Colin Hutton

“I’ve never done anything that’s taken this much work,” says Chan, looking relieved to be out of Anita’s blue tunic and into her civilian clothes. “The idea was to come up with a universal physical language: because synths are machines using up battery power, they would need an economy of movement. There were huge physical challenges: if your eyes moistened, it was a retake, and you couldn’t use many of the things you can rely on as an actor, like using your breath to convey emotion. And Anita is ambidextrous while I’m really right-handed, so I had to learn how to do everything with both hands. Dan would give me homework appropriate to Anita. Jack [Whitehall, Chan’s boyfriend] did come home a bit baffled a couple of times, when I was ironing or cooking meals left-handed. And I’m very clumsy usually; there are loads of outtakes of me bumping into things or falling down stairs, which a synth would never do.”

Chan may be demonstrative and fidgety in person, but she’s eerily unreadable in character. If nothing else, Synth School has produced a group of dangerously good poker players. The series itself is aiming higher, though. If the story of Humans turns out to be the story of humans, then manufacturing intelligent, benevolent technology halfway between Metal Mickey and Skynet will be fraught with danger.

“I think they’ll be our superiors,” concludes Colin Morgan. “The future’s looking both worrying and exciting.”

Humans starts 14 Jun, 9pm, Channel 4