‘I’M A SCI-FI FAN – WOMEN ARE WELL REPRESENTED’

From Channel 4’s acclaimed Humans to the upcoming Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams, there’s something about science fiction that keeps actress RUTH BRADLEY coming back – and she has even been to robot acting school, as Kerry Potter discovers

Actress Ruth Bradley sings the praises of playing a plug-in detective

Ruth Bradley is as cool as a cucumber. She’s poised, serious, so quiet my Dictaphone struggles to pick up her Dublin brogue, and extremely still. Over the course of an hour, she doesn’t once wave her arms around animatedly, nor does she fiddle with her mobile phone. The star of Humans, The Fall and new sci-fi anthology series Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams declares herself ‘pretty bad at small talk. And you know how Irish people are great at embellishing a story? I can’t do it. I’ll say, “No, sorry, that bit wasn’t true.”’

That almost otherworldly calmness is the legacy of her best-known role: DI Karen Voss in Humans, Channel 4’s sci-fi drama about a parallel universe populated by both people and life-like, highly developed robots known as synths. The channel’s most popular homegrown drama for 20 years – which also stars Gemma Chan, Emily Berrington and, in series one, William Hurt and Rebecca Front – will return for a third series next year. Ruth plays the most conscious of the synths, a detective who falls for her police partner, the lovable, 100 per cent