I’M a box set binge-viewer. It’s the modern form of reading Victorian-length novels – which, I may remind you, were published originally as serials in weekly magazines.

The TV box set satisfies the need to know what happens next, the narrative form that has gripped our collective imaginations since we sat round the cave fire telling stories. And – joy of joys – you can watch an entire series without adverts.

I’ve just imbibed the Swedish version of the Wallander detective series. Not the counterfeit Brit effort staring Kenneth Branagh, which knows absolutely nothing about Swedish society. The local version, with the superbly laconic Krister Henriksson playing Kurt, is a different matter.

Normally I hate Nordic Noir because it is misogynist, gratuitously violent and humourless. Which definitely reflects something about the cracks in Nordic society, despite its affluence. What I noticed about the Swedish Wallander is that practically all the baddies and psychos are from the upper middle class or political elite.

Of course, you can’t escape the real world entirely by watching box sets. Film and TV companies don’t spend oodles of cash – Game of Thrones costs $10 million an episode – without some eye on the profit line. More insidious still, you can’t escape the political agenda of a digital dream machine. TV fiction can’t help reflecting – even in a subliminal way – the contemporary angst and concerns of the capitalist consumer system to keep us buying, rather than revolting.

How else do you explain the sudden appearance of hagiographic royal biographies such as Victoria and The Queen, or jolly “brave Brit” extravaganzas such as Dunkirk (budget $100m), at precisely the moment when Brexit has produced the greatest political instability and uncertainty since… well, 1940. Coincidence?

I’m not suggesting there is some central committee of the British ruling class which sits down and orders a fresh batch of patriotic propaganda when there are economic wobbles, or when the dastardly Euros start misbehaving.

What I am arguing is that at moments of (UK) national uncertainty, the creative class responds to protect its own. A creative class (usually Oxbridge educated) that is deeply embedded and beholden to the system – financially, socially and culturally.

That includes folk like Peter Morgan – CBE in the last New Year Honours list and ranked 28 in The Telegraph’s “100 most powerful people in British culture” – who created and wrote The Crown.

Morgan is actually the son of a German Jew who fled to the UK from Nazi Germany. He follows a long line of immigrants who joined the British establishment and became more British than the British, just as poor Sicilian immigrants to America such as Franck Capra invented the idyll of small town America for Hollywood.

Then there is the Anglo-American Christopher Nolan, writer-director of Dunkirk and the Batman movies. Nolan’s Dunkirk blockbuster shows plucky Brits defying Hitler. There’s hardly a black face in sight, which is odd as 65 per cent of French troops, most of the British army logistic and supply corps in France, and a lot of the engine crew on the big rescue ships were black. And just in case you had forgotten, this was a monumental British defeat caused not by Guderian’s Panzers, but the classic incompetence of British army generals.

But then, Hollywood never lets the truth get in the way of making money. Nor do the Mail, Telegraph and Murdoch press. Their role is to fill acres of newsprint telling us how we, the descendants of those brave lads at Dunkirk, are just as plucky and ready to see off Johnny Foreigner in the Brexit negotiations. (By the way, Kerevans died fighting fascism in World War Two, so I intend no slight against anyone. But then, my mother hated Winston Churchill till her dying day, reminding me he ordered Welsh miners shot at Tonypandy.)

None of the above stops me watching the box sets goggle-eyed. I’ve just breezed through series two of Victoria, and loved every minute. Can’t wait for the Yuletide “special” when Price Albert invents Christmas. Victoria is pure soap but utterly compelling. The CGI of the building of the new House of Commons (circa 1847) was on screen for half a second – only a geek like me would have noticed how accurate it was. I love the political storylines: the Irish Famine, the Corn Laws, and the Chartists. Can’t wait for series three, when the Royals have to flee the London working class and hide out on the Isle of Wight.

The reason this series is such glorious propaganda is that Queen Vicky is portrayed as a “modern woman”. She’s just like one of us: no airs or aristocratic fads. And a feminist, not to say a complete lefty liberal.

The 19th-century monarchy has become a 21st-century middle class, professional household with Vicky balancing childcare with the day job. Then there are the terrible in-laws. And incompetent politicians getting us involved in Afghanistan. But don’t worry – Vicky is the embodiment of a beneficent state that will look after the people and get it right in the end.

And yes, fictional Vicky does persuade Prime Minister Peel to abolish the Corn Laws and introduce free trade, so the Irish won’t starve. Hint, hint: in post-Brexit Britain we will again be free to trade as we want with the world and be great again! (Forgetting Peel did not abolish the Corn Laws to save starving Irish Catholics, a million of whom were effectively murdered by the inaction of the British state. Rather, the Corn Laws were abolished under pressure from Victorian capitalist mill owners so they could pay their workers less.)

Which brings me to my point: Scotland won’t fully escape the baleful ideological propaganda of the British establishment until it creates its own box sets. By which I mean that until we have an indigenous film and television industry that reflects our own history and values, our national psyche will forever be invaded and held prisoner by the interests, culture and historical distortions of that same British establishment.

Yes, we have Outlander. I applaud its commercial success and the steady work it provides for Scotland’s television professionals – and they needed it. But Outlander is based on books by a novelist from Arizona, and developed for the screen by a Californian who worked on Star Trek. Ignoring the scifi element, Outlander reinforces the classic vision the world has of Scotland: kilts and bagpipes. This is not my history, this is Brigadoon meets Dr Who.

I want to see the real history of my country portrayed dramatically on the screen. A modern history of revolt and self-discovery, humour as well as tragedy. I want to see depicted the 1911 Singer Strike and 1915 Glasgow rent strike – when Scotland’s working women led great social protests. Heck, even a box set of Mary Queen of Scots, but speaking French, as she did.

I know a record £70m was spent last year on film and TV production in Scotland. But Ireland secured more than three times that figure. Plus Ireland manages to turn out half a dozen indigenous feature films every year, not just foreign productions. Please can I watch a box set that reflects modern Scotland to the world?