Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Extrapolations’ On Apple TV+, A Star-Packed Anthology About People Dealing With Climate Change In A Near-Future World

Extrapolations, created by Contagion writer Scott Z. Burns (who wrote and directed the first two episodes) is an anthology series that tells interweaving stories of different characters dealing with climate changes in a near-future setting. Each episode takes place during a different year, starting with 2037 and moving to 2070 in the final episode. Some of the characters introduced in the first episode return in subsequent episodes, while others are either introduced later or are one-episode-and-done.

EXTRAPOLATIONS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: An illuminated photo of the earth. A young woman (Yara Shahidi) steps on the photo, and starts to talk about climate change, to be broadcast via hologram to protesters in Tel Aviv and elsewhere.

The Gist: In 2037, the planet’s average temperature has gone beyond the 1.5 degree Celsius increase negotiated at the Paris accords in the 2010, and now nations have to figure out strategies to keep things from going even higher. A climate change conference going on in Tel Aviv attracts the protesters mentioned above, who are there to object to the nations that are there dealing with tech bigwigs like Alpha Corporation owner Nick Bilton (Kit Harington).

But he also has patents to desalination technology that some of the drought-stricken nations at the conference desperately need. Omar Haddad (Tahar Rahim), representing Algeria, doesn’t want to horse trade with Bilton for open access to the technology, but feels he may have to.

In the meantime, a developer named Junior (Matthew Rhys) is working with Bilton on a major casino construction project in an unusual spot: Above a polar glacier that has broken up due to climate change. He goes there with his pop star girlfriend Hannah (Heather Graham) to schmooze the representatives of Russia, China and other countries that are currently stationed there. But when he gets there, he finds other countries have set up mining operations. What he doesn’t know is that Bilton is negotiating a mining deal behind his back, especially with the need for minerals for battery manufacturing at an all-time high.

In Israel, new rabbi Marshall Zucker (Daveed Diggs) wants to dedicate himself to the congregation where he’s just been hired, but his father Ben (Peter Riegert), wants him to take a job at his Miami synagogue, especially after the money he contributed. “That’s how the world works,” he tells Marshall. At Marshall’s first service, his mother (Leslie Uggams), who was in favor of him staying in Israel, collapses and hits her head; Marshall is dismayed that Ben continues to negotiate the polar deal with his business partner Junior, even as his wife is lying paralyzed in a hospital bed.

Wildfires are raging all over the planet, including in Israel and the US. Rebecca Shearer (Sienna Miller) works for the Parks Service, trying to make sure vanishing animal species aren’t destroyed by these fires. She’s also pregnant; the poor air quality and stress involved with a fire she’s working in causes her to go into labor early. Her husband, Omar Haddad, cuts off his time at the Tel Aviv conference to join her, which leads to a deal with Bilton that gives up way too much ground for his desalinization technology.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Any anthology series will get compared to Black Mirror these days; the comparison isn’t completely accurate here but it’s the best analogue we can think of.

Our Take: When you have an anthology series that’s jam-packed with as many stars as Extrapolations is, you start to wonder if the stories that are going to be told are going to be actually good stories or just acting showcases for those stars. Extrapolations offers a little bit of both, depending on the episode.

Since the first episode follows four different sets of characters, its message is like a sledgehammer, because there’s no time to explore the issues surrounding climate change with any sort of subtlety. The world is literally on fire in the first episode, and the holograms are egging on the protesters with language that isn’t inflammatory but certainly strong. Glaciers are melting, hundreds of thousands of species are disappearing, wide swaths of the planet are dry.

It’s a message that needs to be heard, as that’s where we’re headed. It also needs to be heard that there are people like Junior, Bilton and Ben Zucker who don’t believe in climate change or don’t care enough to let it get in the way of a massive business deal. But the first episode zings so quickly from location to location that it sacrifices its characters at the altar of the message.

The second episode, taking place in 2046, is better because it concentrates on Miller’s character Rebecca Shearer, who is now working for a large wildlife nonprofit and using new technology to communicate with one of the last humpback whales on the planet. She’s given the translation of the whale’s bleating a familiar voice, that of her late mother, Eve (Meryl Streep). She also has to deal with the “summer heart” her 9-year-old son has, partly due to his prematurity, partly due to the environment; she plays videos of Eve reading, made expressly for her son.

When Burns slows things down, the message doesn’t overwhelm the characters. Oh, don’t get us wrong: That message is still there. Rebecca’s job is to find the “last one” of disappearing species in order to foster their preservation, but species are disappearing faster than she and her colleagues can manage. But it also gives us time to delve into Rebecca’s relationship with Eve as well as the difficulties the next generation are facing due to the unrelenting pace of climate change.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: The young woman concludes her speech by saying that as a planet we will get creative to face the crisis in front of us.

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to the CGI walrus that becomes a part of Rhys’ story in the first episode. We won’t say how it’s a part, but we’ll just say we side with the walrus here.

Most Pilot-y Line: “There’s a thing in Alaska now called a ‘pizzly bear.’ Comes from a grizzly fucking a polar bear. A friend of mine shot one last year,” Junior says to his right-hand man. Who knew Rhys could play dickheads so well?

Our Call: STREAM IT. You may tire of the message Scott Burns is trying to get across by the end of Extrapolations‘ eight episodes, but there are moments in there that will be affecting and effective. You just may have to try your luck to find them.

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.