Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Hot Skull’ On Netflix, A Sci-Fi Series About An Epidemic And The One Man Who Is Immune

Imagine the world was suffering a pandemic of communication, where people who are infected walk around talking nonsense. How quickly would the society break down? A new Netflix series from Turkey takes place in a world like this, eight years into such a strange pandemic.

HOT SKULL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A man opens up a case of microcassettes, then checks his temperature.

The Gist: For the past eight years, a worldwide epidemic has been affecting how people communicate. Called ARDS, the main symptom is that the people infected speak nonsense; they’re called “jabberers.” The virus is spread via that jabber; if someone who doesn’t jabber is exposed to a jabberer’s speech, that person can also be infected, which is why people wear noise-cancelling headphones throughout the streets of Istanbul. An organization called the Anti-Epidemic Institution (AEI) has exerted power by creating safe zones and enforcing curfews.

Murat Siyavuş (Osman Sonant) somehow finds himself immune to the jabber virus. When he is exposed — he tests himself by listening to tapes of jabber — his head spikes in temperature while the rest of him stays normal. He also has seizures, hallucinations, and other head-spinning symptoms. But he never jabbers.

He’s been hiding out at the apartment of his mother, Emel (Tilbe Saran); on an errand run, he sees a young woman (Hazal Subaşı) reading a book in a bus shelter, and the two of them communicate via written notes. It gives him hope, much like the flower he sees growing through the blacktop.

When his mother sends him back out for soap, he encounters a jabberer at the store, which causes a lockdown. He gives his headphones to a kid who’s trapped inside with him, and he manages to escape and stagger home, his head swimming with hallucinations.

After the incident, Anton Kadir Tarakçı (Şevket Çoruh), one of AEI’s top investigators, wants to know who the person was that gave his headphones away. He knows about Murat, who was a linguist at a government facility researching the virus; when the facility caught fire, he’s the only one who didn’t die or get the jabbers, and he’s unaccounted for. When the headphones are traced back to Murat, though, his bosses don’t want to hear it.

In the meantime, there is evidence that Özgür Çağlar (Özgür Emre Yıldırım), one of the main researchers at that facility, is actually alive. Murat knows that Özgür is the only one who can put a stop to this epidemic, so he somehow infiltrates AEI headquarters to see if he can find out more — and delete his file in the process.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The grim, dystopian feel of Hot Skull (original title: Sıcak Kafa) is very Walking Dead-esque.

Our Take: Written and directed by Mert Baykal based on the novel of the same name, Hot Skull is set in a world that seemingly has no sun. It’s relentlessly grey and dingy in the version of Istanbul depicted here, with nothing but grimy projects and industrial buildings in Murat’s universe. The safe zones might be safe, but they’re patrolled by gun-toting AEI officers and strictly enforced. Everyone is wearing headphones and more or less walks around in their own bubble.

Of course, what we described isn’t all that much different than life as we know it now, where it seems like everyone walks around with their heads in their phones or wearing earbuds that blast music or podcasts that help us shut out the outside world. We’d imagine that’s what’s being alluded to here, with a soupçon of COVID and masking fears mixed in. Given how extensive Murat’s voice over is in the episode’s first ten minutes, where he explains exactly what this epidemic is all about, the show definitely starts out putting us in a world that we don’t want to be in.

But Murat represents hope, as we see when he flashes back to the beginning of the pandemic, when he and his then girlfriend still had hope that their team, led by Özgür, can conquer this virus. He still has no idea why he’s immune, and the visions in his head sometimes take over his thought process, but at a certain point in the first episode, he goes from feeling sorry for himself to thinking he needs to really see if Özgür is still alive.

It’s that hopefulness, which we see when he looks at the woman at the abandoned bus shelter, or the flower poking through the concrete, that will carry this series. We’re not particularly in the mood to see eight episodes of people talking nonsense in the middle of what looks like a police state, so Murat’s race to try to finally find a cure, while Anton chases the one and only person who’s proven to be immune to this virus, will give viewers at least something to root for amongst all the grimness.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: As he walks the hall towards his mother’s flat, he sees a red pine-tree air freshener in her window, indicating that AEI is inside. He takes one step forward, then changes his mind and turns around.

Sleeper Star: Hazal Subaşı plays Şule, the woman reading a book in the bus shelter. Her ethereal presence will likely be one of the things that will motivate Murat during his quest for a cure.

Most Pilot-y Line: Anton is in a booth at AEI headquarters, being asked to show he’s not a jabberer. He gets sick of being asked to keep talking and says, “If you don’t open the door, I’ll shove the keyboard down your throat.” Okay, then!

Our Call: STREAM IT. Hot Skull has just enough bright spots to cut through the greyness of the first episode.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.