The success of Vince Gilligan’s drug dealer melodrama Breaking Bad and its melancholy prequel Better Call Saul were rare cases of lightning striking twice on television. But will third time prove the charm – or might it harm his cast-iron legacy as one of streaming’s foremost miracle workers?
That is the question posed by Gilligan’s risky new sci-fi series, Pluribus (Apple TV+, Friday), which finds him embarking on a new relationship with Apple+ and its magical chequebook while reuniting with Better Call Saul star Rhea Seehorn.
Whatever else can be said about Pluribus, nobody could accuse Gilligan of playing it safe. Where his previous shows were scorched-earth portrayals of American decline and fall set in the aching dry heat of New Mexico, Pluribus is whimsical sci-fi, heavily influenced by Kurt Vonnegut and Philip K Dick. He has done science fiction previously, having worked on 1990s conspiracy thriller The X-Files. But Pluribus’s tone is radically different: it is simultaneously a satire, a frothy dark comedy and an ominous warning about the dangers of groupthink.
The excellent Seehorn is Carol Sturka, grumpy author of best-selling romantasy novels which she secretly loathes (she also despises the nerds who adore her work). She lives in semi-secrecy with her girlfriend and manager – her readers would be distraught to discover she isn’t a buccaneering heterosexual – while simmering with displeasure about the path she has taken in life. But her self-loathing and frustration are abruptly replaced by anger and terror when a plague sweeps the world, radically changing 99.9 per cent of the population.
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Think Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where the snatchers all sound like Joe Wicks or the Happy Pear twins and only want the best for you. There is no more racism or crime – animals are set free, and everyone is a vegan who enjoys group hugs. The new collective is eager to draw Carol into its embrace – yet as the last misanthrope standing, she isn’t biting. She instead insists on investigating whether there are others like her who have resisted assimilation into a new reality that is John Lennon’s Imagine made flesh.
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Pluribus goes out on a limb with its elevated, even aggressive quirkiness. The tone isn’t for everyone: Gilligan’s bleak sense of humour has the quality of too much black coffee: it might give you a buzz or bring on a headache.
Seehorn, however, is masterful as a woman who finds that the end of the world isn’t substantially different from an all-expenses-paid weekend at Centre Parcs – and has a great foil in Karolina Wydra, who plays the mysterious Zosia.
Breaking Bad fans might find it all a bit silly and underwhelming – idiosyncratic sci-fi being the most acquired of all tastes (in another universe, this is just a feature-length episode of Black Mirror).
But you have to credit Gilligan for trying something different and making the most of Apple’s bottomless pockets (an early set piece is filmed at Bilbao airport because ... why not?).
It’s hard to imagine this hugely strange show becoming a phenomenon along the lines of Breaking Bad, one of the defining hits of the streaming era. Yet, as a next chapter in his career, one of the medium’s most original voices, it is deeply fascinating and charmingly weird.
