Meryl Streep voicing a whale can’t save eco-crisis drama Extrapolations

The last time Scott Z Burns wrote a piece of speculative fiction about a global catastrophe, his vision proved prophetic. Having anticipated a deadly bat-borne pandemic of Asian origin in his screenplay for the 2011 film Contagion, the writer now has a go at playing soothsayer again with a series that maps out what the next 50 years might look like if global warming continues unabated.

Extrapolations, on Apple TV Plus, is a sprawling cautionary tale presented as eight individual but interlinked stories. Set between 2037 and 2070, this ecological horror-cum-drama travels across our increasingly ailing planet, with dying ecosystems, barriered seas and jaundiced, pollution-choked cities. We switch from a scorched India to a melting Arctic; from the Oval Office to a community synagogue. But the decade-by-decade devastation is keenly felt at every location.

No expense has been spared in realising this future Earth, or indeed in filling it with stars. To name all the illustrious actors who appear here alongside Meryl Streep, Sienna Miller, Marion Cotillard, Edward Norton and Kit Harington would take up the remaining column inches. Between the acclaimed showrunner, burning subject matter, arresting visuals and stellar cast, Extrapolations should be one of the must-see shows of the year. Instead, it feels like a watchable disappointment — never an outright failure, but a missed opportunity.

Perhaps Burns is guilty of having taken on too much. The anthology structure enables him to consider different facets of the climate crisis: how it is exacerbated by fatalistic capitalists and myopic leaders, tackled by conservationists, tech innovators and eco-terrorists, and experienced by everyday people. But this focus-shifting approach also allows the series to become digressive and inconsistent.

Where some subplots — about faltering COP summits, cynical business ventures, poor health and forced migration — seem grounded in grim plausibility, others are steeped in religio-philosophical musings or veer towards the realm of far-fetched sci-fi. Episodes about transhumanism and interspecies communication detract from the show’s ability to persuade us that what we’re watching isn’t a dark fantasy but a possible near future.

Burns also lets big ideas eclipse the characters. While condensing a half century into eight hours requires some exposition, it is frustrating to see capable actors reduced to regurgitating overwritten chunks of on-message dialogue or playing borderline parodic villains (or, in Streep’s case, voicing a whale). The result is a drama that can feel like a celebrity-led public awareness campaign.

But maybe the time for nuance has passed when it comes to the climate disaster, and if a scene involving an endangered walrus crushing an anti-eco industrialist gets through to people, then that’s really all that matters.

★★★☆☆

Episodes 1-3 on Apple TV Plus from March 17. New episodes released weekly

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