Deepfakes, deception, and the death of truth: Why The Capture now feels terrifyingly real

As The Capture returns for its third season, Sophie Sanders says it feels less like fiction and more like a mirror held up to our present reality. How do we begin to tell what’s true?

 The conspiracy thriller The Capture is back for a third season feat. deepfakes, advanced surveillance technology, and disinformation galore. Once called the ‘most preposterous series’ on television, it’s now unsettlingly relevant, spookily applicable, and powerfully prescient.

Within minutes of the opening episode, viewers find themselves back in the BBC news studio with Khadija Khan. To say she has her finger on the pulse would be a gross understatement. She poses a perspicacious question to Acting Commander Rachel Carey – and it’s the question my generation is asking about every sphere of life. Having identified that questioning everything we see has become a national habit, she asks, ‘How do we begin to sort fact from fiction?’