When it comes to predicting the future, why are TV writers better than politicians? | Zoe Williams

From BBC drama The Rapture on the climate crisis to Apple’s Criminal Record on the rise of the far right, culture often sees what politics fails to In the BBC’s new apocalypse drama, The Rapture , the UK is engulfed in a terrifying heatwave. I watched a preview of the programme in May, while preparing to interview the lead actor Ruth Madeley. I thought at the time: “This will be much more frightening when it chimes with the real life weather, bad luck for them that it’s not coming out for a couple of months.” But, by the time of meeting Madeley the following month, we were already in the middle of a heatwave that would lead to the highest ever recorded June temperature in the UK. The whole encounter made the show feel even more prophetic. She was in a central London hotel, air-conditioned inside, but all the door handles and surrounding street furniture – benches segmented by metal arm rests, to make life just that little bit harder for homeless people – had got way too hot. It was lik

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