Your personal threshold for pandemic fiction, at this stage in our ongoing global kaleidoscopic bacchanalia of doom, may have dropped precipitously since the post-apocalyptic novel Station Eleven became a sensation in 2014.
In bringing the novel to the small screen, they have assiduously rounded off its sharper, more despairing edges, and amplified its moments of humor, its small but deeply felt instances of connection and humanity.
Again and again, the series presents situations where its characters could make the kind of shocking, violent, nihilistic choices that characters make so routinely on performatively bleak shows like The Walking Dead.
Another thread of the story takes place in a small regional airport, to which several strangers have their planes diverted as civilization crumbles.
Mostly, though, the main thrust of the story takes place 20 years after the virus, in a world overgrown with plant life and devoid of electricity.
But here it’s brought to life with such empathy, such fumbling, all-too-human earnestness, that it seems like it has the power to single-handedly save humanity from itself.
The troupe’s lead actress, played by a steely-eyed Mackenzie Davis, has connections to characters in the series’ other plot threads.
Precisely how these characters interact — how they split apart, reconnect and meet their ultimate fates — has been greatly altered in many cases.
Patel’s character Jeevan, in particular, is forever overmatched by his circumstances, whether it’s caring for a young child he just met or helping to deliver a baby in an abandoned big box store.
That, ultimately, may be the true reason this tale of viral pandemic, mass death and the crumbling of institutions proves such a strangely heartening comfort.