Creator Scott Z. Burns (Contagion, Side Effects) helms this new anthology drama series that peers into our future to explore what life on our climate-changed planet will be like. (eight planned 50-min. episodes)
Glen: This star-packed new series is interested in how the “chaotic effects of climate change have become embedded into our everyday lives,” and each interconnected episode explores people who are confronted by difficult choices—will they choose complacency or courage? The first three of eight planned episodes have been released, beginning with “2037: A Raven Story,” which focuses on Junior (Matthew Rhys, who was so great as the titular character in the reboot of Perry Mason), who’s taken the blaze-of-glory path of greed. The second, “2046: Whale Fall,” features Sienna Miller as researcher Rebecca Shearer, who’s studying what may be the world’s last whale. The always amazing Meryl Streep stars as Rebecca’s ailing mother, Eve. This second episode packed an emotional wallop. The third, “2047: The Fifth Question,” focuses on Rabbi Marshall Zucker (Daveed Diggs), who’s petitioning the government to save his congregation’s flooding Florida temple. Neska Rose stars as Alana Goldblatt, an adolescent member of Zucker’s congregation who’s having a crisis of faith—why is God allowing this to happen? It’s all pretty depressing but also very well executed and acted—activism filmmaking at its finest.
Anna: It’s a heavy series, and the first episode took a while to grab me. By “Whale Fall,” I was hooked though. Miller and Streep both do a fantastic job of making the audience invest in the storyline. Shearer has a young son, Ezra (Joaopaulo Malheiro), who suffers from a condition that shortens his life with exposure to the sun. This world is an ugly place, but there are still small moments of beauty. It seems that many people left in the world are cruel and selfish, but there are also those looking to do good. Diggs as Rabbi Zucker is a great example of that. Constantly at odds with his father who wanted him to be a lawyer, he can’t seem to catch a break. All he wants is to provide a safe haven for his congregation, yet at every turn he’s told no. I can’t say the series is a wholly pleasant watch, but these performances are dynamite. I, for one, intend to watch the entire series.
Glen: Burns seemed to be prescient when he wrote Contagion (2011), about a global pandemic seen through the eyes of health care workers and the CDC. In many ways, it mirrored our struggle with COVID-19. Will future episodes of Extrapolations pivot to the sort of innovative spirit that we like to believe inhabits the human race, allowing us to stave off the worst of climate change or at least find a way to survive it? Or are we going to simply shrug our collective shoulders and watch as our planet becomes uninhabitable? That question is at the heart of this ambitious, sprawling, and somewhat incoherent series, which I’m looking forward to watching unfold. Subsequent episodes star Edward Norton, Diane Lane, Keri Russell, Marion Cotillard, and Forest Whitaker. If the planet is going down, with a cast like this, it should be an entertaining demise.
Anna: Not a fun subject to sit in, but one that is knocking at our door constantly these days. It’s sort of a trick, getting this tremendous of a cast on the same project. Who’s not going to watch, even if the subject is a bummer? It tells us many different stories under the same umbrella, almost a mini movie each episode. With that upcoming cast list, there’s no way I’m missing any of this series. Just don’t watch it when you are already feeling low—it’s not told through rose-colored glasses.
New Times Senior Staff Writer Glen Starkey and freelancer Anna Starkey write Sun Screen. Glen compiles listings. Comment at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Mar 23-30, 2023.