Stories about the future of humanity, especially over the last few decades, have usually contained some element of concern about climate change, whether it be the unceasing rain falling on Blade Runner‘s Los Angeles, or the bleak desert landscapes of Mad Max: Fury Road. However, the star-packed Apple TV+ series Extrapolations, created by Scott Z. Burns, doesn’t flinch from focusing the drama on the nightmare potentially waiting for humanity in the future.
“It was always front and center in the pitch,” Burns tells Consequence. “Rather than have a show where there might be an episode that explores climate change, the big character in our show is the planet, and these are things that are going to be happening on the planet, depending on the choices we make.”
Says Daveed Diggs, who plays a rabbi struggling to teach his faith in increasingly bleak times, “I think a lot of escapism and speculative fiction allows or asks us to forget the reality of the situation or just step away from it. And this one’s like, no, no, no. Real is real and science is science. This is one of the many trajectories we could be on and we’re just going to live with that.”
Every episode of Extrapolations is set in a different year, beginning in 2037 and ending in 2070: Over those 33 years, the anthology series reveals how rising pollution, species extinction, and extreme weather patterns affect its core characters, from a marine biologist communicating with the last humpback whale to two men attempting to transport stolen goods through the drought-plagued landscape of India to the most awkward New Year’s Eve party in recorded history.
“I was just excited about getting to be in something that’s a big swing creatively, and is trying to talk about climate in a way that we haven’t before, but then also has these wonderful personal stories that I think have a lot of points of entry for people,” Diggs says.
The subject matter is dark and gets darker when you consider Burns’ track record for predicting the future: As a frequent collaborator with Steven Soderbergh, he wrote 2011’s Contagion, which hit pretty damn close to home nine years later, when the COVID-19 pandemic began.
