Piecing together the history of an increasingly fragmented world in one stellar docu-series: With the rise of right wing and populist movements, the ubiquity of “fake news,” and the increase of QAnon-style conspiracy theories, it can sometimes feel like the people writing human history have begun to lose the plot.

A new six-part documentary series, “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” is prolific filmmaker Adam Curtis’ attempt to find it, and put the fragments back together again. Available in full on YouTube (watch episode 1, runtime 1:14:15), the series describes itself as “an emotional history of the modern world” and tries to piece together 20th century events in the US, UK, China, Russia, and others in an ambitious telling of how we got to where we are today.

The series puts individuals and their feelings center-stage: Using Curtis’ trademark style of merging archival documentary footage and narration by Curtis himself throughout, the series ties together disparate ideas into a (sometimes) coherent and always gripping narrative that returns to Curtis’ key motif throughout his films: How the individual self (and how to control its desires) became the central focus of politics and consumerism in the 20th century. He also dives into how that process shaped the political and economic systems we take for granted as the only way things could ever have been. If there is one take-away from Curtis’ series it is that the systems and institutions that underpin our societies are not an inevitability, but are results of the choices made by very human people and the notions thought up by the very (flawed, emotional) human mind.

If these ideas seem disconnected and fragmented, that’s because they are: The essayistic documentary style adopted by Curtis naturally gravitates towards fragmentalism, but in doing so, allows him to tell multiple stories at once, resulting in films that truly capture the vibrant and chaotic sense of history unfolding. Even if you don’t agree with the underlying premise, “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” is worth watching for the sole feat of witnessing Curtis wrap up the threads of his ideas in a neat little package and tie a ribbon on top.

This doesn’t necessarily come through very well for some: The Telegraph’s Ed Power has described the series as “an entertaining ghost train-ride of a documentary that is addictive even when it doesn't make sense (which is often),” while other critics have gone so far as to call the series “incoherent.”

The decision to examine grand world events through interior lives of the activists, thinkers, and politicians Curtis spotlights gives the series its distinctive focus: “In the age of the individual,” Curtis writes in the synopsis, “what you felt and what you wanted and what you dreamed of were going to become the driving force across the world.” To tell a history of humanity in an age dominated by the individual and his/her feelings, “you've got to tell a history of what went on inside people's heads, as much as what went on outside,” Curtis told the BBC.