A powerful flu virus rips across the globe almost overnight, killing most of humanity.
John Mandel, “Station Eleven,” whose first three episodes arrive Thursday on HBO Max, focuses less on survival than on how the human spirit, as expressed through art, insists on thriving.
Kirsten’s parents are unreachable, the reasons for which dawn chillingly that night as patients begin to crowd the hospitals.
The 10-episode limited series jumps between the early days of the plague and two decades later, when Kirsten has somehow managed to continue her acting career after the apocalypse.
Governments have collapsed, but civilization has, in small pockets, regrouped.
Patrick Somerville, who adapted Mandel’s novel for television, previously worked on HBO’s “The Leftovers,” which took place after the unexplained disappearance of 2 percent of the world’s population.
So the series conveys the anguish of the pandemic with a few well-chosen scenes, rather than letting them accumulate to the point of numbness.
Its most striking device cuts between scenes from before the plague and the same settings decades later, overgrown with cruelly beautiful vegetation, as if to hold up the skull of civilization and say alas, we knew it well.
I can also imagine a viewer who sees the quirky, thespian’s-eye treatment of the subject as twee and art for art’s sake.
That is, it’s a work that celebrates humanity by celebrating humanity’s drive to create.
Not everyone agrees on what art is for, of course, and if you want it to help you forget your troubles, “Station Eleven” is not for you.
But if you want catharsis and a surprising laugh, I’m not sure I know a better show to go into the next year with.