“Humans suck [« suck », en version originale] “. The sentence uttered by Alana Goldblatt (Neska Rose) in episode 3 sums up well the emotions of the viewer in front of Extrapolationsthe disaster series by Scott Z. Burns (Contagion, An inconvenient truth, The Report) and broadcast since March 17 on Apple TV. In this fiction, humanity is divided into two categories: the good guys who fight to save the world and the tech-savvy wealthy who shamelessly destroy the planet to line their pockets. It lacks a little nuance, but it sets the scene.
Ultra-documented, the choral series with a four-star cast explores the effects of the climate crisis over more than thirty years (between 2037 and 2060). The first episode opens with COP42 in Tel Aviv, Israel, the planet’s temperature has already exceeded the 1.5°C limit of the Paris agreement and the United Nations is abandoning efforts to stay below the 2°C threshold in exchange for a patent on a technology that would solve the problem of access to drinking water. Die of heat or die of thirst, a difficult choice that the United Nations makes reluctantly. We are no longer within a few degrees and, in any case, the Earth is already burning.
The higher the temperature, the higher the level of suffering.
As the American journalist David Wallace-Wells explained in his book The Uninhabitable Earth in 2019, the higher the temperature, the higher the level of suffering. And not just for humans. Megafires set the forests ablaze, the icecap has completely melted, species are dying out one after the other… Children are born with heart failure, American cities are swallowed up by water or razed by typhoons, food shortages are generalize, mosquito bites kill, whales get lost in the seabed. One thing is certain, the characters suffer in Extrapolations. And the public too, panicked by this anxiety-provoking portrait of the world of tomorrow.
Halfway between a Years and Years by Russell T. Davies and don’t look up by Adam McKay, only one question runs through the episodes: why on earth does humanity not react to avoid the worst? Why does she keep blowing on her burning house? In the vein of the Canal+ series The Collapseinspired by collapso theories [la collapsologie est l’étude systémique des effondrements de la société], Extrapolations reveals the true face of a humanity on the edge of the precipice. And it’s not a pretty sight…
Technoprophets more cynical than ever
One could imagine that sobriety would be the watchword of a civilization in decline. On the contrary. Technology continues to gain ground. Part of the world’s population is starving while the other half communicates through holograms, wanders the metaverse in the guise of an avatar, flies in unmanned planes. Scott Z. Burns explores the contradictions of humanity, more interested in money than in its own survival with characters that are more cynical than ever.
Technoprophets atmosphere Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos in the guise of Kit Harington (Game Of Thrones) or Matthew Rhys (The Americans) gorge themselves on the misery of the world, blinded by the lure of gain. But, by wanting to present itself too much as a whistleblower series, Extrapolations runs out of steam quickly. Closer to a documentary of anticipation than to an entertainment fiction, it is as if crushed by the weight of its subject. It is difficult to be interested in the plots and the characters, often too binary or too bland. The headliners (Meryl Streep, Tahar Rahim, Edward Norton…), whose talent is unfortunately under-exploited, multiply in indifference. The series, however, puts a spotlight on the collapses expected in the years to come. And it’s terrifying.