The cancelled CBS sci-fi series is available to stream on Amazn Prime and CBS All Access.

In this intensely divisive moment in our country, let me take you back to a (somehow) simpler time: the summer of 2016.

In June of that year, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were still weeks away from becoming the official presidential candidates for their respective parties, the Access Hollywood tape was months from being unearthed and the widespread campaign that would deteriorate our country into a dumpster fire was, by comparison, still just simmering kindling waiting for the accelerant.

Lost in the muck of those opening stages was a wacky little CBS summer show called “BrainDead,” a surreal political satire that pulled in real footage of the candidates on the campaign trail as background noise for a sci-fi takedown of the real failings of partisanship in Washington, D.C. The show, from “The Good Wife” creators Robert and Michelle King, was canceled after one little-watched season overshadowed by the real-life political thunderdome forming beyond its borders.

Its fade into obscurity is a real shame because in revisiting it nearly three years later (or what seems like a decade), the show’s well-positioned and intelligent aim at the festering wound that is base politics feels more pressing than when it aired – likely because that target has only grown bigger in the intervening years.

Even in 2016, watching shows about politics felt like a chore when reality was already sucking the life out of you. But “BrainDead” took a delightfully outlandish approach because, in its D.C., bugs from outer space that looked like ants infiltrated the government by burrowing inside the brains of politicians. By pulling the cerebral strings of the country’s lawmakers, they could steer America, and eventually the world, into further chaos, weakening us from within while secretly setting up a larger invasion.

Naturally, even with control over their human hosts (the bugs crawl in through the ear and push out a chunk of the brain now rendered useless), the invaders found it hard to battle the darker impulses of politicians, who still manage to find the worst course of action even when they aren’t even at the wheel.

The show, which employed an almost surreal sense of humor, is told through the outsider eyes of Laurel (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a filmmaker with a distaste for politics, who takes a job with her senator brother (Danny Pino) with the promise it will help fund her obscure documentary.

Catching onto the alien bug agenda, Laurel takes on their queen, who is hiding out inside a loud-mouthed, red-state senator played partly by Tony Shalhoub and partly by Tony Shalhoub’s often-indiscernible Southern accent.

As the bugs probe deeper into the government and Laurel and her team of misfits (Aaron Tveit, Nikki M. James) fight back with technology and wit, “BrainDead” offers what could have been a satisfying piece of counterprogramming to the frustrating rhetoric already brewing in the 2016 election. It also has some striking parallels to the future Trump administration – it even opens on the eve of a government shutdown.

But in my rewatch of the show, which I loved (and not just for its incredibly catchy musical “Previously On” segments and uber-talented cast), I recognized that “BrainDead’s” ultimate message is still valid today.

These space bugs worked as a team, a tightly organized colony devoted to a singular mission to prey upon our government’s aversion to any such across-the-aisle cooperation. The show rarely talks about the president and never shows him, instead putting all of its focus on the political hive of senators that we entrust to represent and protect us, but who – as we see every day now – can’t join together to get anything done except squabbling.

There are plenty of “what ifs” in the land of canceled TV shows, but with some hindsight, “BrainDead” was ahead of its time, or at least a palatable snapshot of an institutional problem exacerbated by our current climate.

The Kings have said future seasons would have seen the bugs infiltrate Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Hollywood, the epicenters of our society. But if “BrainDead” was only going to be a one-season wonder, I’m happy it happened in D.C., the place most in need of a good reality check.

If you’re open to some savvy sci-fi with a political chaser, “BrainDead” is streaming on CBS All Access and Amazon Prime. But if you watch on the later platform, maybe order some bug spray too. This show will make you think they’re everywhere.

Reporter Hunter Ingram can be reached at Hunter.Ingram@StarNewsOnline.com. Hunter is a member of the Television Critics Association.