What a view | Meryl Streep, Tobey Maguire lead all-star cast in Extrapolations, story of a world hit hard by climate breakdown, on Apple TV+
- Corporate greed has driven the earth to eco-apocalypse in Extrapolations, whose star-studded cast includes Gemma Chan, David Schwimmer and Forest Whitaker
- Meanwhile on Netflix, three-part documentary MH370: The Plane that Disappeared offers little new information about the flight that vanished
It would be easy to sneer at Extrapolations (Apple TV+).
The eight-part, near-future, climate-catastrophe anthology series, which concluded on Friday, starts stodgily, keeping its powder dry until a few episodes in. Then the tension rises and the emphasis shifts from cheesy emotional wrangling to more visceral action.
There is a preachiness to its ecological lessons, but that doesn’t mean it is wrong about the calamity. The tenuously linked stories capture the realities of wildfire, extreme heat, flood, famine, urban chaos and mass migration, as triggered by unstoppable corporate greed.
Elephants and tigers exist as cuddly toys only; Florida is drowning; Indian street bars sell gulps of oxygen (air is no longer free); and businessmen are planning a casino in the Arctic.
Alpha – a descendant of Alexa, but also much more – is the font of all wisdom and something to which even Edward Norton, Tobey Maguire, Meryl Streep, David Schwimmer and Marion Cotillard can’t hold a digital candle. It is, after all, part of a certain notorious billionaire’s ubiquitous footprint.
