Since we seem to be living in a dystopian fiction at the moment, I’ve been increasingly drawn to sci-fi as a cheering form of entertainment - you know, to reassure myself that at least we’re not overrun by flesh-eating zombies, in the middle of an intergalactic war, or using time travel to alter the past, with disastrous results. It could be worse.

Having heard strong praise for Devs, the new series written and directed by Alex Garland, we thought we’d give it a whirl. I’ve watched four episodes now, and my final conclusion is locked in a box. It could be good, it could be bad, I just won’t know for sure until I’ve finished the series and opened the Wikipedia page explaining it all. In the meantime, here are a few half-baked offerings based on my limited understanding of what I’ve seen so far.

Devs is centred around a Silicon Valley-style tech firm called Amaya, run by Forest, who looks a bit like Jesus and possibly has some sort of messiah complex. The cutting-edge campus is watched over by a giant looming statue of a child who is presumably the eponymous Amaya, Forest’s dead daughter. The statue is very weird and I’m assuming that at some point in the series it will start walking and everyone will freak out. There are various departments of Amaya, but the most intriguing is ‘Devs’, which does something mysterious with quantum computers. Sergei, an Amaya employee, is offered a position on the Devs team, but on his first day he discovers something so appalling about what they’re doing that he throws up in a toilet. He’s obviously going to go batshit and tell everyone what he’s found out, so Forest and his henchman Kenton have him killed. It’s a plastic bag over the head job, which I found a bit pedestrian for such a sophisticated operation. Anyway, Sergei’s girlfriend Lily knows something’s suss, and when Forest and Kenton kindly show her a video of her boyfriend supposedly setting himself on fire, she is far from reassured, and decides to investigate. Her ex, who she left for Sergei, is a cyber security specialist, which is handy, if a little awkward.

That’s the set-up, and in the background is this sexy golden computer pulsing away, with all sorts of hints about what it does. To avoid any more spoilers (and hide the fact I’m not even sure what it does), I’ll say only that it’s about free will and predetermination, all very highfalutin concepts that backpackers would discuss on The Beach. You get the impression Alex Garland would really have preferred to have his actors just sit around in an elegant concrete box, archly discussing notions of autonomy without the bother of having to develop pesky things like characters and narrative. Because I’m not wildly invested in any of the cast or storylines. It’s all rather earnest and po-faced, without much levity to lighten the mood – which is a bit of a waste when you’ve got Nick Offerman playing Forest. But, you know, that computer screen does show some shit-hot stuff occasionally, so maybe I’ll stick with it, see if it grows on me. If it doesn’t, I’m going to ditch it and re-watch Guardians of the Galaxy. The philosophical chat might not be up to much, but at least it’s got jokes. And at least I’m sitting at home with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc, not battling Ronan the Accuser for his Infinity Stone in the middle of Knowhere. It could be worse.

• Devs, Hulu and BBC Two, 8 episodes
• Guardians of the Galaxy, Disney+