DYSTOPIAN drama Humans has been making Channel 4 viewers question everything they know about humanity – but did you know parts of the AI thriller were filmed in an Ealing school?

Characters navigate what it means to be human in the show as ‘synths’, lifelike AIs modelled on humans, become more integrated in daily life, working in everything from hospitals to brothels.

For one Ealing school, Alec Reed Academy, this fantastical premise became a reality as film production company Kudos contacted them about shooting in their state of the art facilities last June.

Kudos, who also produced Spooks and Hustle, send down production and location crews who scoped out the school and fell in love with the sweeping wooden learning curve corridor.

Principal Gary Lobbett said: “Students and staff were very surprised to see their classrooms appear in the first episode of Humans earlier this term!

“There has been real excitement at the Academy and it is very good to have been involved.”

The excitement of spotting their classrooms on TV has been bubbling among students,  one Alex Reed Academy pupil, Jessica, said: “It is so strange seeing our school on TV. I walk down that corridor everyday.”

Although the hi-tech vision dreamt up by British writing team Sam Vincent and Jonathan Brackley involves walking, talking animatronics, the school itself is so state-of-the-art that it just needed a quick spruce up to represent the future.

The Acadamy’s communications officer Komal Gorasia said: “It’s worth pointing out that apart from an additional few thousand pounds worth of lighting the learning curve appears on TV without alteration.

“However the cleaning cupboard next to the music rooms was radically transformed into a state of the art janitor’s cupboard, and the lift at reception was decorated to appear totally different on screen.

“The classrooms in the year10 pod only required minor cosmetic surgery before filming could be given the go-ahead!”

The filming, which took place on October 27 last year, transformed the school into a film set, with a huge entourage of outside broadcast lorries and catering trucks as well as the film crews and of course actors now racing to solve the mystery of AI consciousness on our screens.

This was also not the Academy’s first brush with fame, their sports hall and theatre has been used by the BBC’s debate show The Big Questions four times.

Despite the serious debate held at the academic venue, the pupil’s are more excited about the sci-fi suspense playing out every Sunday night, as pupil Louis quipped ‘does that mean out school is famous?’