Has COVID created a new subgenre of political fiction where anything goes?

Imagine a world where the government can halt all financial transactions for a number of days. Where detainees from a specific commission aren’t entitled to legal representation. That’s precisely what happens (among other extraordinary situations) in Netflix’s Zero Day, a political drama that thrives on an unsettling sense of plausibility. Here’s a question I’ve asked myself while watching it: would a show like this have existed before COVID and lockdowns reshaped our collective understanding of what’s possible?

In recent years, political fiction—especially in TV and film—has become bolder, more surreal, and, in some ways, disturbingly real. What once felt like far-fetched Orwellian nightmares now seem like logical (if extreme) extensions of actual policies we’ve seen unfold. So, has the pandemic and the radical shifts it triggered birthed a new subgenre of political fiction where literally anything can happen?

Before COVID, political fiction followed a somewhat predictable formula. Even the most intense thrillers—think House of Cards—were tethered to a familiar sense of political realism. Corruption, espionage, and power struggles played out within recognisable frameworks. Then 2020 happened.

Governments worldwide enacted emergency powers that, pre-pandemic, might have seemed unthinkable. Travel bans, curfews, lockdowns justified in the name of public safety. Suddenly, entire societies experienced firsthand how quickly normal life could be rewritten by executive orders and public health mandates.

This radical shift in what audiences now accept as “believable” has cracked open new creative possibilities. If a show were to suggest, say, that a global crisis leads to the suspension of habeas corpus or the freezing of digital assets, would we really blink twice? Probably not.

Zero Day, a political thriller starring Robert De Niro, is a prime example of this post-pandemic storytelling shift. The show hinges on the idea that a mysterious cyberattack triggers extreme government countermeasures, including suspending financial transactions and stripping legal protections from certain detainees. Pre-COVID, this plot might have been dismissed as alarmist. Now? Now, it aligns with a broader pattern of how governments have responded to crises in the modern era.

This isn’t to say that Zero Day and shows like it are exaggerating for shock value. Instead, they reflect an emerging subgenre that embraces what we might call “post-plausibility politics.” In this space, political fiction no longer asks “could this happen?”, but rather “how close are we already?”.

Why are we drawn to these stories? Here’s a theory: we crave control over the narratives we consume because real life feels increasingly unpredictable. Political fiction, especially in this emerging subgenre, gives us a space to explore worst-case scenarios without actually living through them (again). When we watch a fictional government seize emergency powers or rewrite legal norms overnight, we’re engaging with our real-world anxieties—but in a way that’s safely confined to a screen. The story ends. We turn off the TV and go back to normal.

If the pandemic-era shift in political fiction has taught us anything, it’s that storytelling evolves in response to real-world fears. We’re in an era where “anything can happen” is no longer just a writer’s trick—it’s a reflection of how quickly societies can shift under pressure. Does this mean we’ll see even wilder, more extreme political fiction in the coming years? Probably. But the real question is how these stories will shape our understanding of power, crisis, and the boundaries of the possible.