Netflix’s Inhuman Resources stands out from the welter of binge-worthy streaming series that have jostled for attention during lockdown for two main reasons. The first is its themes: the ongoing attrition of the French post-war political bargain, the unprecedented extent — at least in recent French history — of popular dissent, and the role of large corporations and automation in the proletarianisation of white-collar workers that has fuelled much of this discontent. The second is that it features a superb central performance from Eric Cantona, who may be one of the few people of whom it can said that he is a better actor than he was a football player.

The story focuses on a middle-aged, formally middle-class HR executive, Alain Delambre, who has been forced to take on low-status, gig-economy work. After a number of on-the-job incidents, he is eventually brought in for an interview at Exxya, a large and troubled corporation. He has to adjudicate in a fake hostage role-play designed to test the mettle of a group of executives, and this provides him with an opportunity to take revenge upon the system.

There are numerous contrivances above and beyond the already wildly implausible central conceit within Inhuman Resources that are likely to stretch even the most generous viewer’s credulity; for instance, the idea that Delambre’s 50-something, van-dwelling, down-on-his-luck alcoholic work colleague is also a proficient hacker with a flashy computer setup who is happy to get himself embroiled in industrial espionage. These objections, though, tend to be elided while watching by the momentum of the plotting, some skilful cliffhangers, and the gravitas that Cantona — alternately seething, tender, confessional, and despairing Ñ brings to the part.

The series is situated somewhere between social realism and a pulp thriller of that particularly contemporary type in which a heroic individual has to out-game the system to survive. There is a certain conservatism to this type of thriller, which posits that there is still space enough within the system for a sufficiently ruthless, smart, and networked citizen to be able to exploit their own ‘human capital’ and ultimately triumph over adversity. This is only really made possible by the protagonist taking on some or more of the character of the system they initially despise. The problems of neoliberalism are best overcome by developing a more neoliberal self, your failure is always a result of your own inadequacies — your own stubborn, residual moral objections.

Inhuman Resources equivocates between a systemic and a cultural critique, and ends up in many ways a character study of those for whom work and its attendant status and structure is vital for personal coherence, and as a way of suppressing and channelling violence. For Delambre, work is the base on which all other elements of his life depend. The slightly clunky English title then becomes a more resonant pun by the end, not just critiquing the aggressive and punishing management ethos of big business, but also serving as a wry reflection on the resources of inhumanity that the individual must summon up in order to survive, or indeed, on which the system itself flourishes and extends.

The problem of ‘proletarianisation’ — downward mobility on the part of the formerly secure, middle-aged, and middle-class in the Global North — isn’t new, of course. One of its earliest cinematic treatments came almost thirty years ago in Joel Schumacher’s 1993 Falling Down. Inhuman Resources‘ overlapping and inconsistent themes mirror in some ways the gilets jaunes movement, and the loose British and American equivalents that have acted as a vehicle for the anti-systemic, anti-globalist, but not always socialist politics that are currently designated by the term ‘populism’.

Whether one has any sympathy for such men — and Delambre is certainly unsympathetic, inchoate, manipulative, and self-interested — there is no doubt that they are a key variable in contemporary political life, and it is to the series’ credit that it doesn’t take the difficult, complicated, and problematic figure of the white, middle-aged worker as a paradigm of potential socialist consciousness. Unusually, Inhuman Resources, at five hours long, could actually do with being longer in order to make its narrative pay-offs feel less rushed, and to allow its themes to develop. The world, after all, is full of Delambres, and recent history suggests that if the Left can’t find a way to speak to or for them, the Right certainly will.