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Right now, it's a men's shoe retailer. Half the time I go online I'm offered "Birkenstocks for Fall." As if.

Before, it was worse. Men's underwear ads followed me everywhere. I'd be searching for Stephen Colbert's online promos and half the computer screen was filled with an array of photos of bulging male crotches in teensy briefs. The phrases "Minimalist Microfibre" and "Penis Pouch" are not ones I want to see again. It was mortifying.

It's a common experience, this. Realizing you're being followed online all the time. It takes effort to stop it and even then you're not quite sure it's over. Corporations know too much about you. There are vast stores of data somewhere and you're in there. Paranoid much? We all should be.

Paranoia is at the core of Mr. Robot (Friday, Showcase, 10 p.m.), which isn't about robots at all.

No siree. It's very good, cool, spooky and strong. Paranoia is its theme. And it's brilliantly done, one of those series that, although fiction, uncannily and eerily connects with very real current events. You want paranoia about hackers and big data? It's here. In fact, since the time Mr. Robot started airing in the Unites States to great acclaim, we've had the Ashley Madison hack and Ashley Madison pops up in the first episode.

Plot summary doesn't do it justice, but here goes. We meet Elliot (Rami Malek), a twentysomething cybersecurity specialist by day, toiling away with other computer nerds. But in his free time, Elliot is a deft and devoted hacker. A do-gooder, of course. We see him take down a guy who peddles child porn. And he worries about a young woman at work he's crushing on, big time. He knows her secrets, knows her boyfriend is cheating and wants to help, but is reluctant to get involved.

Elliot is painfully awkward. He says, "I don't know how to talk to people." He goes about on foot or by subway, in a hoodie with the hood up. He looks vulnerable, a millennial who takes things too seriously. At first you think this character could be in one of those shows about awkward, lovestruck young people on network TV all the time.

But Mr. Robot, made by the USA channel, is premium-cable quality drama. The plot is a starting point only. It is made with enormous care and has an acrid quality that is reminiscent of paranoid British thrillers of the 1980s. Malek is riveting as Elliot and the series quickly and confidently shifts us into a net of intrigue. It takes some skill to keep us oriented even as everything about Elliot's life and actions remain deliberately confusing. But that's achieved. And the series is made with fierce visual dexterity – this world Elliot inhabits is ours, but seen through his eyes, it is a deeply disturbing place.

It is also a very grown-up drama, bleakly pessimistic. We are in the arena of Edward Snowden and his acolytes here, inside a bitter-tasting story which assumes that corporate and government integrity and scruples are mere ideas, not principles to be acted on.

Where Mr. Robot marries mere cyberpunk attitudes to direct political comment is when Elliot meets the man known as Mr. Robot (Christian Slater), a renegade hacker whose grand plan is to bring down the contemporary capitalist system. As Mr. Robot, the character, rightly points out, essentially that system rests upon computer technology. We already know that Elliot takes a dim view of the world's hierarchy. In a voice-over, he rants quietly to himself about, "the top 1 per cent who run the world like they are God, without permission." So when he meets Mr. Robot and is given a direction and focus for his skills, he's hooked.

The series, created by Sam Esmail, is important, a must-see for several reasons. Rami Malek is stunning. He's in almost every scene, his big eyes taking in the minutiae of urban life and the grand plans of giant corporations. But he's no one-note rebel, this guy. There's a disturbing complexity to him. He might even be a little insane. It is suggested, eventually, that Elliot's perspective might not be reliable at all. And that's creepier than accepting his perspective.

Watch it. It connects deftly and smartly to the digital-age paranoia we all carry but foolishly shrug off.

And if online purveyors are reading this, as they surely are – I'm good for underwear, thanks, and I'd die before I'd wear Birkenstocks.

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