Mr Robot season 2 premiere: Why you should be watching

The envelope-pushing US drama returns for a second season – perhaps it's time you caught up

You may have a hard time believing that one of the most ambitious shows currently on television is named Mr. Robot.

The envelope-pushing US drama follows fsociety, a group of vigilante hackers who target the corporations that keep America's finances spinning, spearheaded by a masked mascot (think a malevolently contorted Mr. Monopoly). Our protagonist Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek) is embroiled in all of this – not that he'd know how or even why. He's prone to blackouts, see.

TV's fascination with anti-heroes – Tony Soprano, Walter White, The Americans' Philip and Elizabeth Jennings – is approaching the end of its second decade. But with Mr Robot comes a new breed – the unreliable protagonist who openly narrates his confusion and distrust of you – the viewer. Alderson holds the keys, but he's not sure what they open. In many ways, he's a reluctant magician withholding the most coveted trick without realising it's so. In this way, he is one of television's most ambiguous main characters.

Moreover, the decision to base the series in a modern day universe – a world currently dealing with Isis, Anonymous and Donald Trump – provides Elliot's paranoia with just the injection of intensity it requires to keep this series' tension spinning.

Malek is a sensation, his bug-eyed wonderment that demanded attention in drama Short Term 12 translating unfathomably well onto a character most actors wait decades for. Initially pitched as a Robin Hood-meets-Dexter type, Elliot is the kind of guy who will recklessly break the law to bring more extreme lawbreakers to justice without a care for any system but his own. Rather than being one-note, however, his fractured psyche leads to a Fight Club-style twist mid-way through season one that simultaneously changes the face of the series and arms Malek with a stack of strings to add to his bow.

Elsewhere, there's Portia Doubleday as Elliot's childhood friend Angela Moss, Martin Wallström as Tyrell Wellick - a powerful employee of E-Corp, the main company targeted by fsociety - and Christian Slater as our titular anarchist (the less said about him the better).

With its distorted view of a technologically-obsessed society, Mr. Robot increasingly feels like a fleshed-out episode of Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror. One such example arrives in the opening episode of season two - a moment which sees fsociety desecrate Wall Street's Charging Bull by sawing off the sculpture's testicles only to pose with them for a selfie. It's the kind of left-field action that would occur in Brooker's dystopian parables - and one that fits in seamlessly with the off-kilter landscape presented in this series.

Mr. Robot's creator is Sam Esmail, a man who - going by the striking red intertitles and accompanying 80s synth - has a clear knack for delivering material draped in his own stamp, probably helping steer the series to unprecedented Golden Globe success last January.

Originally intending the show to be a film (unsurprising considering his clearcut inspiration from films including The Matrix and American Pyshco) such is the creator's investment in his series that he has taken on writing and directing duties for all ten episodes of season two - something rarely done by showrunners.

Like the hacking going on at its centre, Mr. Robot has wedged its way into the anticipative gene of today's television viewing audience as one of the must-watch shows of the moment. This is aided by the allusions to real-world events, the on-location New York shoot and a cameo from Barack Obama (really) who appears in news bulletins concocted especially for the series. "I'm going to ask you to have hope for me," Elliot tells the audience in season two's opening episode as he attempts to abate his frantic lunacy. "Please, have hope."

Fortunately for this series, that's not too big an ask.

New episodes of Mr. Robot will be available to watch every Thursday on Amazon Prime