The show goes on and on… and then stops.

I’m not sure if what follows constitutes a spoiler. I don’t think so, but if, by any chance, you’re on the edge of your seat awaiting the finale of Station Eleven (and haven’t fallen off it yet, having sunk into a coma) then you might want to look away now.

Did the Prophet finally wreak death and destruction on those he believed had wronged him all those years ago? Sadly not. He performed a scene from Hamlet and it was all fine.

Were Kirsten and Jeevan dramatically reunited two decades after the trauma of the pandemic ripped them apart? Ehm, well, they sort of bumped into each other, had a hug, a bit of a chat, and then went their separate ways.

Did we ever find out the meaning of the annoying phrase ‘I remember damage’ from the dreadful graphic novel that everyone kept wanging on about? No. It was incomprehensible the first time, and just as incomprehensible ten hours (and twenty years) later.

There are many mysteries in this world which may never be answered but at the top of my list right now is: How did Station Eleven get commissioned? We’ve all seen outrageously trashy TV which really doesn’t cut the mustard, but the very trashiness at least demonstrates a desire to entertain. Station Eleven isn’t terrible. It’s all executed competently – lovingly even – but I’ve spent decades in the broadcast industries battling to get stuff past commissioners. They ask, quite rightly: ‘What’s the story?’ ‘Who are we rooting for?’ ‘Why now?’ and crucially ‘Why should we care?’.

After ten episodes of this series I find myself asking: Were they all on holiday that week? Did they lose their crib sheet of ‘basic questions that need to be answered’ before forking out millions of dollars on this production?

Station Eleven starts well, it sets up some nice narrative questions, but then it barely bothers to answer them, or think through the consequences in a way that any normal person would care about. Series creator Patrick Somerville may love Hamlet, and it’s an important play, but just because there are a few vague similarities between this post-apocalyptic drama and Shakespeare’s epic, it doesn’t mean it’s okay, in the finale, to subject us to ten minutes of his tedious characters performing it – extremely badly and extremely slowly. I certainly couldn’t really see what the parallel between Hamlet and Station Eleven was. As extended references go this one seemed completely random and off target.

Surely there must have been an executive somewhere who read the scripts and said: ‘These are really quite boring. Go away and do them again with more stuff happening.’ Did no one wonder if they were getting a discount on the script fee given that so much of it was cribbed from another dead writer?  Not to mention the implausibility of pretty much every pandemic survivor knowing Hamlet well enough they can go on at a moment’s notice, in any part without having to learn their lines. Did no one look at the rough cuts and suggest politely that the editor nip and tuck a few thousand of the cavernous pauses between every line?

There is a wonderful moment early in the series, when someone auditions for The Travelling Symphony (the tedious band of players around which the show is centred) by reciting Bill Pullman’s cheesy but rousing Independence Day speech from the 1996 movie of the same name. If Station Eleven wanted to say something about the role of art after an apocalypse then this was a funny and genuinely interesting way to approach it. But nine self-indulgent episodes later I was left wondering if this witty moment had slipped into the script by accident.

Verdict: Station Eleven is the kind of series that gives long-form drama a bad name. It keeps you hanging, it promises all sorts of interesting ideas, and then, almost willfully, doesn’t deliver. It’s ten episodes of self-indulgent twaddle that goes absolutely nowhere. Please god, let there not be a second season. That really would be the end of the world. 2/10

Martin Jameson