Writer Marietta Kirkbride provides some insight into the second episode of Angst!

Algorithms run our lives. They pick the films we watch, the ads we see, suggest the friends we should make. Last year, an algorithm decided our kids’ exam results for us, or at least it tried to. In social media land, algorithms are moulding our politics – that’s pretty big. But it’s not like they are running all of society’s infrastructure or social cleansing our communities, right? Well, not yet anyway…

Except in Garwood – the fictional town in Angst! episode 2 – that’s exactly what they are doing. The Teachings of Smart Town follows on from Martin Jameson’s political conspiracy theory treat, Actors, with a story about an algorithm and the dedicated town residents that depend on it. ‘Garwood’s algorithmic real-time intelligence’ system (affectionately known as ‘Gari’) is responsible for everything from communications to resource management to traffic control. In this world, not so unlike our own, sustainably is high on the priority list, and Gari is there to make sure human beings don’t ruin themselves by being anti-social, lazy or greedy. It’s better to just not give people the option.

Harmony reigns supreme in Garwood, and it looks to be a fail-safe system until one day Gari starts behaving very strangely. A series of glitches in the system, known locally as ‘aberrations’, become the talk of the town and dominate residents’ lives. I’ll save you from too many spoilers, but let’s just say it’s amazing how much social unrest you can cause with a bit of prejudice and one euphoric hit from the 1980s.

As Charlie Brooker shows us so excellently in Black Mirror, it’s never the technology itself that really threatens us. It’s our human fears and flaws that lead us and our societies into trouble. Timor Greer has a role to play – of course he does – but it only takes a few loose stones to start a landslide.

Series Creator Martin Jameson adds:

Part of our pitch to BBC Radio 4 was to bring brand new, but experienced, voices to BBC Audio Drama. Marietta has come from theatre, and brings a very different, perhaps more reflective sensibility to the series, whilst being completely in tune with the overall concept. The Teachings of Smart Town slipped easily into the second episode position, as a way of telling the listener that the world of Angst! could take many forms and also to have that moment where the audience notice Cyril Nri’s unmistakable tones again and think: ‘Professor Greer? Wasn’t he a doctor in the last episode?’.

Producer Nicolas Jackson and I love the ambivalence of Smart Town. Algorithms – we all say we hate and deride them, but we’re already losing the ability and will to live without them. As Marietta says, we might think it’s the algorithms we fear, but of course the real danger lies within ourselves.

And if you’re listening in series order, then have you spotted the daily ‘Angsty’ Easter Egg yet? All will be revealed after Friday’s episode.