In 2011, director Steven Soderbergh showed how a pandemic would affect our world with the film Contagion. Scott Z. Burns was the screenwriter. He also produced the two-time Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which deals with climate change. Clearly, humanitarian crises inspire the American. With Extrapolations, he explores, over the course of eight episodes, the future repercussions of the gradual warming of our planet at different times, from 2037 to 2070.
The proposal is intriguing, no doubt. The cast is downright impressive. Among the names in the credits are Meryl Streep, Marion Cotillard, Edward Norton, Kit Harington, Forest Whitaker, Sienna Miller, Gemma Chan, Tobey Maguire, Daveed Diggs and Diane Lane. Some only star in one episode, while others return from time to time. Kit Harington, for example, plays multi-billionaire Nicholas Bilton, founder of the Alpha company, whose shadow hovers throughout the story.
With the exception of a few recurring characters, each episode offers different points of view. A marine biology specialist who communicates with the last whale in the oceans, a rabbi who tries to save his synagogue from the waters in Miami, a duo of petty criminals who must carry a precious package from one city to another in India, a couple who get another one for New Years in San Francisco. We visit different places and meet a wide variety of protagonists, which is quite relevant since it is a global crisis.
Unfortunately, these qualities only adorn the surface of Extrapolations, which was already very attractive with its topical premise and its big-name actors. No need to dig for a long time to realize that this series has a lot of shortcomings. First, it is terribly poorly written. Nuance and subtlety are almost non-existent, the tone is moralizing and dramatic, then the characters are poor helpless victims or rich profiteering bastards. The music, which is meant to set an eerie vibe, is just annoying – that over-excited piano… The production is lazy and relies too much on dialogue that wishes it was as deep as it claims. Certain performances, including that of Marion Cotillard, sometimes save the day, but not often enough.
Of the eight episodes, only one really pleased us and this is the sixth, which was uploaded last Friday. Our suggestion: just watch him or do yourself harm and persevere to the end to find out the fate of Nicholas Bilton aka Elon Z. Bezos.
