It is 2040 and human life on Earth seems to have collapsed. The Oslo talks have failed, the peace march in New York has achieved nothing and there has been an uprising in Shanghai. Our world has become overpopulated and, if that wasn't inconvenient enough, an apparent nuclear apocalypse has seen "people in Chicago …become shadows on buildings". Around 50,000 pioneers have ventured into deep space and settled on a habitable planet in a Goldilocks Zone.

If you watched the first episode of Outcasts last night, this should all be sounding familiar. It's everything you might expect from a new sci-fi show. The only surprise is that this particular show has been made (by Kudos) for BBC (Wales), rather than ABC (Los Angeles). Written by Spooks scribe Ben Richards, the accents are, for the most part, British.

Question is: does Outcasts hold up – does it prove that Brits can do deep space sci-fi as decently as our cousins across the pond?

Richards used the programme's launch to admit he is not the most "sci-fi literate" writer around. Instead he set out to explore profound ideas such as original sin and utopia and whether humans are capable of building a new society from scratch. He was also on a personal mission to challenge Lord of the Flies author William Golding's apparent belief that humans are ultimately doomed by their own nature.

Which sounds suspiciously like that age-old defence of British sci-fi – that while it has usually looked much cheaper than its American counterparts it has always been more cerebral and meaningful. But to my mind, that particular piece of sophistry has been blown out of the water in recent years, thanks to several brilliant US shows, especially Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009) which was something of a sci-fi game changer, not least in its thoughtful and subtle exploration of all the moral and philosophical issues surrounding the US war on terror.

Indeed it would be safe to say that far from outclassing Battlestar, Outcasts seeks to ape that show in several important respects – not least in its look, the presence of ballsy women (Hermione Norris and Amy Manson mean business) and in its basic premise of following the remaining vestiges of humanity as they strike out alone. Oh, and the casting of Galactica alumnus Jamie Bamber of course.

Richards admitted he wrote lines about lasers blasting through night skies only to be stymied by budget considerations. And here is the basic problem with British sci-fi – even one made like the eight-part Outcasts with a co-funding boost from BBC America. So the alien planet still looks very much like Earth (it was filmed – rather obviously – in South Africa), and the pistols appear to have been requisitioned from The Bill props department and painted an ungodly fluorescent orange.

We have come a long way from the dark days of 1970s Doctor Who, outdoor shoots in Welsh gravel pits and monsters made from umbrellas or the inside of a sofa. But even British sci-fi shows such as ITV's Eleventh Hour or Primeval have, for all their ambition, been inevitably much cheaper affairs, hamstrung by shorter runs which make it much harder to build a sense of place and credibility about a new world.

British sci-fi always looks that bit cheaper, while sci-fi jargon ("I wanna DBB him" from last night's episode, for instance) has always sounded to me, well, just a bit silly when delivered in my own accent.

Outcasts is not all bad – the opening space sequence was beautifully done, the script is witty in places and the acting (with perhaps the rather shouty exception of Ashley Walters as the disgruntled macho expeditionary soldier) first rate. But it hasn't stopped my suspicions that Brits remain second best to the Americans when it comes to sci-fi. Plenty of you may disagree, so feel free to DBB me … whatever that means.