The stakes remain impossibly high, the story uniquely compelling, but the net effect is to find this chronicle of a shattered, scattered human civilization strangely comforting, even hopeful. Precisely how these characters interact - how they split apart, reconnect and meet their ultimate fates - has been greatly altered in many cases. Movies 'Return of the Jedi,' 'Selena' and 'Sounder' added to National Film RegistryĪll of this is lifted straight from the book, as is the element that ties the story's disparate threads together: a self-published comic book called Station Eleven whose tale of existential isolation and alienation resonates deeply with various characters. Their attempt to build a civilization of their own, led by an avuncular Irishman (David Wilmot), a former actress (Caitlin FitzGerald) and a security guard (Milton Barnes), provides some of the series' lighter moments. They find what they believe to be temporary refuge with his brother Frank (Nabhaan Rizwan) in his apartment, until things blow over.Īnother thread of the story takes place in a small regional airport, to which several strangers have their planes diverted as civilization crumbles. In the chaos that follows, he - very reluctantly - agrees to help Kristen (Matilda Lawler), one of the production's child actors, find her missing parents. He's just a guy attending a production of King Lear in Chicago when the lead (Gael Garcia Bernal) collapses onstage. (The writers are to be commended for not falling back on the narrative crutch of using television reports as a kind of Greek chorus most of the information we and the characters get about the crisis comes in the form of interpersonal communication - worried texts, frantic phone calls, resigned conversations.)Ĭonsider the case of Jeevan (a soulful, effective Himesh Patel).
#Station 11 rating series#
Smartly, the series chops up the chronology, so we actually spend relatively little time amidst the viral outbreak itself, with all of its by now chillingly familiar business: denial, growing concern, more denial, masks, news bulletins, panic, paranoia, still more denial, etc. Pop Culture Happy Hour In 'Hawkeye,' an also-ran Avenger becomes a mentor - eventually
Yet again and again, they - and the series itself - instead choose the more humane, more profound, more hopeful option. In bringing the novel to the small screen, they have assiduously rounded off its sharper, more despairing edges, and amplified its moments of humor, its small but deeply felt instances of connection and humanity.Īgain and again, the series presents situations where its characters could make the kind of shocking, violent, nihilistic choices that characters make so routinely on performatively bleak shows like The Walking Dead.
John Mandel's novel evidently agrees with you. The good news - and it turns out to be very, very good - is the team that adapted Emily St. If so, you may consider the prospect of sitting down to watch a viral pandemic wipe out most of humanity over the course of ten hourlong episodes on HBO Max to be akin to that of attending an immersively tactile theatrical experience called Root Canal: The Musical. Your personal threshold for pandemic fiction, at this stage in our ongoing global kaleidoscopic bacchanalia of doom, may have dropped precipitously since the post-apocalyptic novel Station Eleven became a sensation in 2014. Jeevan (Himesh Patel) takes Kristen (Matilda Lawler) under his wing as a virus ravages humanity in HBO Max's Station Eleven.
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