Matthew Rhys, Heather Graham, Alexander Sokovikov and Noel Arthur in ”
AppleTV+
In the opening minutes of Extrapolations on Apple TV+, a young environmental activist (Yara Shahidi) prepares to give a speech about the need for action on climate change. As she waits for the cameras to go live, a staff member casually asks if she needs anything. Her not-so-casual answer: “For people to listen.”
That sets the tone for the rest of the series: serious, heavy, and mostly unnuanced. The urgency of their message is of course important enough that no expense has been spared in getting it across. The cast is top-notch and the production design is lavish. But all that heaviness comes at the expense of the human characters, who should be the focus of their stories, making the series a well-intentioned but mostly dry discussion series.
extrapolations
The Bottom Line Good Intentions, Clumsy Execution.
air date: Friday, March 17 (Apple TV+)
Pour: Meryl Streep, Kit Harington, Daveed Diggs, Sienna Miller, Tahar Rahim, Edward Norton, Forest Whitaker, Marion Cotillard, Adarsh Gourav, Gaz Choudhry, Matthew Rhys, Gemma Chan
Creator: Scott Z Burns
In fairness, if there’s one writer who has a right to expect people to heed his predictions about the future, it might be creator Scott Z. Burns, whose script for Contagion turned out to be an eerily prescient preview of the COVID -19 pandemic turned out. Extrapolations go even further into the realm of theory, unfolding over eight loosely connected episodes spanning from the years 2037 to 2070. Each is preceded by a different staggering (estimated) statistic: for example, the number of species lost by 2046, or the number of deaths from extreme heat in 2059.
A handful of main characters recur throughout the plots, the most prominent of which is Nick Bilton (Kit Harington) – a billionaire CEO who has seemingly consolidated everything from Big Tech, Big Pharma, and Big Ag into a single ubiquitous company called Alpha. Most, however, only flit back and forth for an episode or two, usually in the guise of one or two instantly recognizable stars: a dying grandmother played by Meryl Streep, a government official played by Edward Norton, a mercenary businessman played by Matthew rhys . If the goal is to get people’s attention, there are worse ways to do that than trot high-wattage celebrities.
But Extrapolation’s awareness of its own importance works more against it than for it, producing characters that seem less human and more mouthpieces for political debate or sad speeches. A story about Marshall, a rabbi (Daveed Diggs) trying to save his Miami temple from rising water levels, plays for Marshall and an angry young congregation (Neska Rose) like an excuse to embark on long philosophical arguments about sin to let people in. Another, about a scientist (Sienna Miller) trying to save what may be Earth’s last humpback whale, threatens to collapse under the weight of his own metaphors — though this one at least includes the incredible details of what we seem to be doing by the year 2046 about the technology to casually chat with whales.
The more successful episodes of the series tend to be the ones that let climate change serve as the backdrop for more human-scale drama. “2059 pt 2” revolves around a pair of smugglers, Neel (Gaz Choudhry) and Gaurav (Adarsh Gourav), who seem to have little control over their own fate – let alone that of the world’s population – as they make their way through the Drought pave the way in India -scorched landscape. But precisely because they’re nobodies, they can offer a ground-level perspective of the show’s not-so-believable scenarios. Unlike the relatively privileged, sheltered characters that make up so many of the show’s other leads — like the government officials and billionaires who debate geoengineering in comfy, air-conditioned offices in 2059 Part 1 — Neel and Gaurav hardly have any other choice face the elements head-on.
The pair travel at night to escape the dangerous daytime heat, slip into special protective sleeping bags to rest and encounter children who challenge each other to sneak out during the daytime curfew. Along the way, they discuss the state of the planet, but also bicker about women, fantasize about how to spend their wages, and develop the kind of bond you only form when you’ve been through a desperate situation together. In other words, they behave like humans and thereby serve as a better reminder of what’s at stake than any deluge of statistics ever could.
I also thoroughly enjoyed “2068,” a darkly comic chamber play that goes off the rails when a man (Forest Whitaker) tells his wife (Marion Cotillard) and friends (Tobey Maguire and Eiza Gonzalez) that tomorrow morning departing will digitize himself so that his consciousness can be awakened in a brighter future. The picture this chapter paints is undeniably grim — the air is so polluted that San Franciscos carry oxygen tanks to go outside, and most human food consists of some type of seaweed. Still, there is something relatable, even somehow comforting, to the husband’s declaration that he is more optimistic about the earth’s healing ability than his marriage’s. Come what may, our species will find ways to torment one another with Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf-style dinner parties.
Both episodes benefit from a curiosity about human nature that goes beyond hand-wringing monologues about our capacity for greed or complacency, and from an affection for human beings in all our absurd and chaotic glory. More often, however, Extrapolations seems to work backwards, starting with a development it wants to show us, or a technology it wants to consider, or a conversation it wants to have, and beating up thinly conceived characters to play them . “The problem is us. It’s always been like that,” muses one character in the finale. “We did this to the planet, to ourselves, and to each other.” Extrapolations perfectly capture the mechanics of a world falling into ruin. He finds it harder to understand the souls that still cling to him.