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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Vanessa Thorpe, Arts and Media Correspondent

Climate crisis fuels new wave of TV ‘eco thrillers’

The Swarm
In the new series The Swarm, a mysterious force of the deep declares war on humanity after years of relentless climate change. Photograph: ©Schwarm TV Production GmbH & Co. KG/Fabio Lovino

A sudden outbreak of online searches for terms like “deadly fungus invasion”, “poisonous fog spores”, “toxic seafood” and “killer ice worms” might be worrying. It would, though, only be a reaction to the grim natural threats in the latest spate of hit television thrillers. Despite all the real-life horror in evidence across the planet, appetites for revelling in the fictional biological destruction of civilisation appear to be growing.

In the wake of The Last of Us, the acclaimed American drama series currently chronicling a lethal fungus attack, and following the malign fog enveloping Martin Compston in the Scottish sci-fi thriller The Rig, next comes The Swarm, a show with an equally terrifying premise from Game of Thrones’ producer Frank Doelger.

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