The first trailer for the new Hulu series Hard Sun paints a bleak portrait of a world on its way to destruction. In this pre-apocalyptic conspiracy thriller set in present-day London, the end of the world is coming in only five years. A pair of police investigators (Jim Sturgess and Agyness Deyn) discover the truth and try to unravel a tangled web of deceit and corruption.
The six episodes of the series’ first season already aired on the BBC in January, and it will premiere on Hulu next month. Created by Neil Cross (Luther), the trailer is set to the track “Five Years” by David Bowie and hints at a twisted tale of religion, torture, and government conspiracies.
At a Television Critics Association event, Cross said the series was inspired by the song from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Syfy reports. “It’s grounded in science, but it’s metaphorical,” he said. “What drove the notion that we are generally living in a pre-apocalyptic time. We’re in an uncontrolled skid.”
The two cops are complete opposites of each other — Charlie Hick is a devoted family man and as dirty as they come, while his partner Elaine Renko is an aloof loner and also completely incorruptible. While investigating the death of a computer hacker, they stumble upon the evidence that powerful forces are desperate to keep secret.
Sturgess told USA Today that apocalyptic stories have a universal appeal. “I think that is something that is slightly on everybody’s minds,” he said. “People are often very drawn to end-of-the-world stories. It magnifies life and what it means when you think it’s going to come to an end.”
The close-cropped Deyn, a former model, trained for her role by learning boxing and fighting styles such as Krav Maga. “I love that it became a story of human to human, rather than a man and a woman,” she said. “As the story goes on, knowing this information that the world’s going to end binds them as humans, so they can only turn to each other for support.”
All six episodes of the first season of Hard Sun will premiere on Hulu on March 7, so set your end-of-the-world countdown timer. “The singular nature of the apocalypse in the show is that’s it for everyone,” said Cross. “It is the end. There will be nothing after the apocalypse … unless we are offered a Season 6.”
