HBO Max’s limited series Station Eleven is a stunning post-apocalyptic puzzle box that should be crowned the best new show on TV. Its dizzyingly poignant nonlinear storytelling will leave you wondering and dreaming. Also, feral theatre kids with knives perform a lot of Shakespeare! This is a win-win situation.
Adapted from Emily St. John Mandel’s award-winning 2014 novel, Station Eleven is almost too timely—it kicks off with a devastating flu-like pandemic that ravages the globe. (Ironically, production began in January 2020.) But you shouldn’t miss out on Station Eleven even if you’re feeling pandemic fatigue yourself. This is a rich and radical trip through time, space, resilience, art, family, love, loss, and what it means to be human. Rather than compounding our own fears, it transports us past them.
As Glen Weldon at NPR writes in his review, all of the pre- and post-apocalypse as depicted is strangely comforting. Over at Vogue, Taylor Antrim agrees with me: “This isn’t even close: Station Eleven is the best new TV show of the year.” The Globe and Mail also hails the drama’s “sweet, thrilling, important storytelling.” Decider’s Meghan O’Keefe throws down the gauntlet with her headline: “Station Eleven Is the Best Show You’re Not Brave Enough to Watch.” I am here to assure you that there is nothing to be afraid of in Station Eleven and everything to gain.
While I’m upset that I wasn’t onboard Station Eleven from the start, if you’re reading this right now, it’s the perfect time to join in. The series debuted on December 16th, 2o21 on HBO Max and will run a total of ten episodes, which drop every Thursday through January 13th, 2022. We’re awaiting episode 8 right now, so you can spend a few days catching up and still feel a heady mix of excitement and anticipation each week.
I cannot sing the praises of this show loud enough, though it’s hard to know where to start. It’s tricky to describe what happens on Station Eleven because it follows a large cast of characters and we are constantly flickering backwards and forwards in time. But this element, which takes some getting used to, reaps enormous rewards as the series progresses.
Plot points that seem abrupt or confusing in one episode are explored with soaring emotional depth in another. Characters who appear completely unrelated slowly reveal entangled and intriguing connections that can have world-changing repercussions. And every time we think we know what’s going to happen based on the narrative tropes we’ve seen before, people make unexpected decisions and the universe shifts anew.
Much of the action revolves around Kirsten Raymonde (Mackenzie Davis as an adult and Matilda Lawler as a child, both fiercely compelling), who as a young actress watches her famous mentor Arthur Leander (Gael García Bernal, always wonderful) die onstage playing King Lear. This is the first casualty of the pandemic that we witness, but it is soon consuming the globe. Kirsten ends up in the care of a good Samaritan named Jeevan Chaudhary (Himesh Patel, extraordinary). As an adult twenty years later she is a member of The Travelling Symphony, a wandering caravan of artists dedicated to performing Shakespeare in the post-apocalypse.
What became of Jeevan, and Kirsten’s evolution into a knife-wielding badass as ferocious as she is talented, consumes much of the emotional plot space. But we can’t forget the sprawling and colorful cast of the Travelling Symphony (which includes a scene-stealing Lori Petty), dangers lurking from a mysterious man who calls himself the Prophet (Daniel Zovatto, appropriately unsettling) and is rounding up “post-pan” children, or what’s happening at a small airport in Michigan that survivors transformed into a sort of fiefdom. (At said airport, David Wilmot, as Clark, is perfection.)
Last of all, but perhaps most important, there is “Station Eleven” itself, a dystopic science fiction graphic novel created by artist-turned-executive Miranda Carroll (Danielle Deadwyler, in a showstopping performance) that comes to have vital meaning to the characters and is forever interweaving itself in the narrative.
Station Eleven (the miniseries) was created by Patrick Somerville (The Leftovers), who also wrote several episodes and serves as showrunner. Somerville and his team—including some truly visionary set and costume work—manage to breathe new life into already exceptional material. Fans who love Emily St. John Mandel’s novel will find much in HBO Max’s series that is the same, and much that is rendered very differently. I think that’s for the best, because Station Eleven shines brightest when it is at its most surprising, and even dedicated readers will be surprised and pleasantly unmoored.
Why did it take me this long to get into Station Eleven? The truth is that Mandel’s book has been on my to-read list for years, and I wanted to read the book first. But I took a chance on the show and it grabbed me—and now I am devouring the book. Like Station Eleven teaches us, not everything has a perfect linear progression, and sometimes, that makes for the most profound kind of experience.
Based on the fact that Station Eleven is only getting better and better as it goes along, I don’t feel that declaring it one of the best shows of 2022 is premature. I hope that you’ll join me on this journey if you’re not already a part of it. And if you’re reading this article years in the future, there’s still time.
(images: HBO Max)
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