The stories of a disparate array of characters interweave as a flu pandemic brings about the end of civilisation.

Question: Does the world need yet another apocalyptic pandemic TV series?

Answer: Almost definitely not, and yet…

…the first three episodes of Station Eleven have held my attention… mostly.

I loved the season opener which kicks of with a completely fresh spin on how to prise the lid off yet another end-of-the-world coughing saga. A bewildered Jeevan (Himesh Patel) is in a Chicago theatre watching fictional Sci-fi movie star Arthur Leander (Gael Garcia Bernal) playing King Lear. Once you get past the implausibility of casting someone at least twenty years too young to play Shakespeare’s mad monarch, something far more surprising happens and Jeevan finds himself caring for eight year old Kirsten (beautifully played by Matilda Lawler) as a snowy Chicago sleepily realises that the proverbial virus is hitting the fan.

What feels fresh and truthful about this episode is that, as we all know post Covid, the world doesn’t end with a bang, or a riot of psychotic zombies, rather everything goes quiet as a confused populace is shrouded in indecision and uncertainty. Himesh Patel captures this superbly with help from his on screen brother Frank played by the excellent, but underused, Nabhaan Rizwan. So far, so gripping.

And then we’re into episode 2, which feels like a completely different series. The action jumps forward to twenty years after the pandemic hit, and little Kirsten has grown up to be none other than Mackenzie Davies (Yorkie from the Black Mirror episode San Junipero) now the lead actor in a group of post apocalyptic travelling Shakespearean players, inflicting a histrionic rendering of Hamlet on the few remaining survivors who, frankly, you would have thought had suffered enough.  The pace drops to sub-snail velocity, and the only moments of interest are a few flashbacks, and the arrival of some sinister interlopers. If I hadn’t been reviewing, I might have given up at this point, however…

…Episode 3 takes us back to fifteen years before the sniffles of doom hit, and Bernal’s woefully miscast Lear actor is in a Chicago diner chatting up Miranda (Danielle Deadwyler) who is sketching some frames for a meta-prophetically entitled ‘Station Eleven’ graphic novel she is putting together. And now the narrative jumps around like chronologically challenged flea to different stages in their relationship and its culmination on the night the pandemic breaks.

So is this a good series? To be honest, I have absolutely no idea. It’s based on Emily St John Mandel’s 2014 novel which I haven’t read, nor do I know how true this is to its source material.

On the plus side, the weave of stories does feel fresh and intriguing, and I genuinely want to know how things will tie together. It’s also refreshing to see things fall apart with a sense of slow suffocating disbelief rather than the more familiar tropes of rednecks with assault rifles. On the minus side, the pacing is very uneven and many of the characters are annoyingly pretentious and artsy (I’m allowed to say this as I’m a paid up member of the pretentious and artsy club) who spend far too much time wandering around muttering incomprehensible, gnomic gibberish about themselves and/or the state of the cosmos, not to mention oblique and equally incomprehensible references to Shakespeare. I have a drama degree and spent ten years directing in British theatres and I didn’t have a clue what they were on about.

Verdict: I’ll stick with it for a bit longer and let you know how I get on… but if you can’t wait for that, it’s certainly worth dipping into, just be prepared for a few longueurs, and some annoyingly self indulgent characters. 7/10

Martin Jameson

Station Eleven is on HBO Max in the US and comes to Starzplay in the UK from 30 January 2022