Station Eleven (HBO Max)

JTMan

NY Times thinks this will be one of the best TV shows of 2021. ( https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/03/arts/television/best-tv-shows.html )

"This limited series, which arrives Dec. 16, is about a global pandemic that wipes out most of humanity, and I am assuming I’ve scared off at least half of you already. But hear me out: The adaptation by Patrick Somerville (“The Leftovers”) of the 2014 novel by Emily St. John Mandel is moving, eccentrically funny and even hopeful. Following a Shakespeare troupe that travels the Midwest 20 years after doomsday, it invites us to ask what we want to survive us after we’ve done the old mortal-coil shuffle. (Streaming on HBO Max beginning Dec. 16.)"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaAG-SwEa7k

gmisk

I must admit I gave up on the book...but might go back this looks pretty good

yabadabado

David Wilmots character one of the main leads?

Pretty big gig for him.

Slydice

Wierd.. trailer feels similar to Y the last man.

jill_valentine

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118287563#Comment_118287563

Very different tonally and thematically.

One of my very favourite books and the cast looks amazing. The advance hype is very strong, so I've high hopes it might live up to it. Strange to me Sky Atlantic isn't carrying it though, seems fairly squarely in their wheelhouse imho.

jill_valentine

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118287051#Comment_118287051

If it follows the book, he's one of the five-ish main ones, and he's really key to the second half.

This is starting to appear on best-of-the-year lists and getting tips for awards based on the advance screeners. It starts on Thursday with 3 eps in the US, but over here it's being carried by Starzplay (?) on Rakuten.

Slightly mystified by that if it's an awards contender because it doesn't look cheap.

gmisk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118318120#Comment_118318120

Starzplay gets a lot of big stuff here now, you can get it via Amazon prime (but you pay extra for it)

jill_valentine

First three episodes are out and about and I haven't enjoyed 3 eps of anything this much since The Terror. Phenomenally well made. Just a little bit weird, but so confident it makes it work, that and all the space and quiet. It's thoughtful and ponderous rather than Walking Dead grimdark action but that just gave some stuff more impact IMHO.

Also, Idk how David Wilmot feels like he's somehow extra Irish in this but he does and it's class.

Raging I have to wait another week for more now though.

JP Liz V1

StarzPlay on Sunday January 30th

BillGrogan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118334267#Comment_118334267

How did you watch it?

jill_valentine

I saw it on a friend's dodgybox, I'm afraid, so I'm no use to you. Thought it was wonderful though, I'm raring for more.

My only caveat is that sometimes you're shown something that feels a little pointless or random - having read the book I know it's probably not, the significance of everything just isn't instantly apparent. But if I hadn't read it and didn't know that's what was happening I might think it was being a little randomly aimless now and then, because it will only be in the next few episodes that stuff starts interlocking in a big way.

The first three episodes feel like three almost standalone stories, but they're not at all. A big theme of the book is that all this stuff that might seem like a superficially throwaway or insignificant thing turns out to have huge importance or resonance in a few chapters or years time.

The other thing is, seeing the premise in summary doesn't do the execution any justice at all. There's some really, really clever audio and editing stuff that I'm guessing is down to Hiro Murai, and it's some of the best executed "nonsequential timeline" stuff I can think of, it doesn't feel like anything else in the genre.

The post-pandemic setting is beautiful too, the rest of the show has very little in common with Last of Us, but the thriving environment and reclaimed buildings did bring it to mind. It makes a big difference in the tone compared to what you might expect because even though there aren't many people around, everything feels really... well, alive.

jill_valentine

Has anybody else caught up with this yet? Mad to rave about it with somewhere.

Atlantic Dawn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118349480#Comment_118349480

On episode 1 now, hoping to get through the first 3 tonight if I can.

gmisk

Watched episode one.

I like it! I actually don't mind the little flashes back and forward which I usually am not a fan of. It felt very personal and intimate given the large scale of some set pieces, the child actress is excellent. Looks to be one to stick with!

jill_valentine

I thought yesterday's two episodes were a slight step down from the first three, but I still enjoyed them greatly.

David Wilmot's performance in the second is fantastic, but the writing is awkward at times. The Travelling Symphony stuff is struggling to keep Alex sympathetic I think, and a lot's being asked of Mackenzie Davis to try to make their dynamic work. Lori Petty, meanwhile, makes everything she does look easy.

The 1 ep of Travelling Symphony + 1 ep of Somebody Else pattern seems to be holding, which is interesting, but frustrating because that’s two big cliffhangers we've been left with in 2040 before heading into somebody we don't know yet for an hour.

Slydice

01: Wow! That was some damn well written world-ending right there! Definitely need to know more!

Spoiler Warning

The amount of curse words I used about Tanya!😁 but I guess it's ok.. ish.. kinda.. not really but you know what I mean.

Really felt for young Kirsten. Felt better seeing she'd made it to grown up. Everything felt wierd about Jeevan taking an eight year old kid off like that.

I'm guessing the space scene was just grown up Kirstens imagination.

I really liked the flicks between the episode scenes and the post apocalypse scenes. Was hoping for one at the hospital but it didn't happen.

Seeing Mackenzie Davis was a big plus. She was great in Terminator Dark Fate. As I remember she had some real heart in that film so I'm guessing she'll deliver a grown Kirsten from the first episode pretty well.

So yeah, I guess the story is main strength that has pulled me in so far.

Slydice

02: The kid playing young Kirsten is doing a great job!

Spoiler Warning

Also, Phew! Kinda felt some relief there when

Grown Kirsten stabbed the dude. Not for what she did but just that the show lifted the veil on some tension it had been building up. Definitely stuff was starting to feel off and at least that gives some revelation to the mystery. Though it did raise more questions.

Definitely bad vibes from that dude she stabbed and his brother. Also the dude who invited the troupe to perform.

Huge questions about what happened to Javeen and Frank but I get the feeling Frank will have been killed at the apartment by an outsider attack. Javeen.. I dunno.. something more complicated there.

I liked the Hamlet costume. Poor ole Hamlet with the weight of the world on his shoulders... or maybe the coats represent the ghosts haunting him.. I dunno.

A show with a decent script! What a difference!

Also, Mackenzie Davis is a huge strength. The terminator link, her physicallity, her performance of the characters attitude, all feeling sharp like a blade!

Slydice

03: Well.. somehow this show had me rooting for a Conference Pitch meeting on Logistics! 🙂 Air and Sea Unite!

Spoiler Warning

I'm guessing Miranda survives this hotel room stay. They showed the spacesuit in the room with her but I also noticed it on the bus earlier. I'm not sure now if I've missed other hidden elements or if they matter hugely.

Liked the tie-in with Kirsten but I was also noticeing for some of the earlier flashbacks that Kirsten didn't exist in them 🙂

Two good episodes so definitely this director Hiro Murai is one to watch! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiro_Murai

Experience with Barry, Legion on wiki, also Atlanta which I don't know but scored high on RT: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/hiro_murai

Also Danielle Deadwyler's performance as Miranda Carroll. That was really good. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danielle_Deadwyler

Slydice

04: That one dragged a bit but then.. that ending! 😲

Spoiler Warning

This Prophet dude has to go!

Still unsure about Franks fate. Also Jeevan.. could be dead or alive .. nothing has been shown on screen.. wolves were implied I guess.

I wonder who was that baby that little Kirsten was holding. Maybe a little brother from before the night of the play.

Slydice

Alright, so.. the halfway point.

What's the show? Well it's an end of the world (disease) situation. Not actioney, more story about the characters.

Set in the before times and after times using flashbacks/flashforwards. It's kinda half how-the-world-ends-and-people-cope but also half actors/acting/directors/cast/crew/theatre as those are the professions of the people the story revolves around.

Early, it goes fast and has some decent hooks. Getting to be a bit dragging out in the middle but could change again.

Checked the wiki to get a feel for how the rest episodes as the directors/writers seem to matter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Station_Eleven_(miniseries)

A couple of hard-to-tells coming up but then looks like the final episodes will be back to the people from the early ones so might be setting up to end on a high.

05: Ah! Well, that explained a bunch. Episode did drag a bit again. Maybe because I was guessing the reveal from very early on.

Spoiler Warning

So I guess there's going to be a Grown-up Station Eleven powered Kirsten vs a Grown-up Station Eleven powered Tyler. I wonder if Miranda had any changes in the two editions. Maybe they can come to terms.

This Irish guy 😁 The Dubliner theathrical businessman who used to go boating in the mouth of the Shannon.. I assume outta Limerick or off of Kerry. Can't beat having an Irish guy for drinkin and saying F*ck a bunch 😁 and

Spoiler Warning

shitting in a changing room while getting off his head on drugs

fritzelly

I'm half and half on this - the future stuff is boring AF, if it wasn't a limited series I would have given up on it

Slydice

06: Okie..

Spoiler Warning

So the airport folks are still up and running but who's there and what they do is an unknown. Could be good or bad.

Getting to see these bandanas, I'm guessing they don't catch Kirsten. That the kids might take them out. Kirsten already seems to have gotten 3 and there looks to just be 5 more. Maybe the kids will attack them. Hard to tell. Maybe not, maybe there's gonna be an exploration of the bandanas.. hardly that they are the remnants of the cheerleaders?! No sign of a woman among them so far.

These kids definitely need help though. Tyler seems to recognise he's lost control and can't care for them.

Slydice

07: Not sure if there's an award type for her role but Matilda Lawler has done every scene as lil Kirsten really well.

Spoiler Warning

Ah nooooo Frank! 🙁

I remember damage

Slydice

Oop! There's a bit at the end of the credits in 07. It's just a voice line.

Just rechecked the other episodes just in case but nothing at the end of their credits from what I could tell.

ejmaztec

I may have been hallucinating but I could have sworn that the pushbike guy also played the part of Elizabeth's agent in the airport episode (except with a black wig and a "foreign Accent"). I remember the fella as the regular villain, Elias, in Person of Interest.

fritzelly

Will be very pissed off if they do a bait and switch and this show gets renewed - on episode 7 and it's tough to stay engaged with it, better be some payoff

jill_valentine

Episode 7 was stunning imho. Need to sit with it for a while. Been enjoying your posts, Slydice.

jill_valentine

yabadabado

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118394458#Comment_118394458

Now that you mentioned it,I think you could be right.

Slydice

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118394458#Comment_118394458

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118395980#Comment_118395980

Has to be. I'm pretty sure

Spoiler Warning

he mentions that he left the airport .. which we saw he did.. and then came back but lost his memory

ixoy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118388440#Comment_118388440

So that would be faithful to the book then - I found the post- stuff dull and it's the main reason I've not started this show yet. Good to know!

gmisk

I finished episode 2.

It is definitely an acquired taste it will be too slow and ponderous for many people, it's probably why I gave up on the book!

I will admit I do prefer the sections set at the start of the pandemic so far (ther child actor , but Lori Petty (great to see an upturn in her career since orange is the new black) and Mackenzie Davis are always hugely watchable.

jill_valentine

I get what people mean about the future stuff but I really think both halves inform the other, especially by the time you get to ep 7 and they start to blur together a lot more overtly.

And yeah, Lori Petty and Mackenzie Davis are just so damn watchable. That little scene of them playing cards is nothing, really, but it’s got more charm in it than whole sitcoms ever manage.

Homelander

I'm up to date now and absolutely love it. Reminds me of something like The Leftovers - huge background concept, but really boils down to just being a very grounded and exceptionally well-made production about the people left behind.

Favorite episode so far was either the opening episode, or the one which had David Wilmont front and centre. Terrific performances.

I would agree that while MacKenzie Davis is pretty good, the future stuff is really not remotely as engaging for me either. For me it's at least partially due to the casting, I can't take to Lori Petty and I think David Cross was a poor choice here as well.

But the overall quality of the future segments is lagging behind. Overall though, superb drama so far.

Never seen such a good first episode building amazing tension and style descend into such boring garbage. What were they thinking! It went from brilliance to something from The Walking Dead Season 50.

Slydice

I

Remember

Damage

08: Oh.. I don't think things are going to end well

Spoiler Warning

for the people of the airport

Had a bit of a google for the Ave Maria used at the end of this but couldn't find it. Search results for Ave Maria are not exactly thin on the ground 🙂

yabadabado

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118430379#Comment_118430379

That version of Ave Maria is from a band called 7th Avenue.

https://open.spotify.com/artist/13EahEu09Px92S8GLirDey?si=9RnwnOciSl-D8fyefWlNYg&utm_source=copy-link

Slydice

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118430450#Comment_118430450

Ah! That's the one! Such a distinct sound compared to the others I found on my search.

Really fits the feel of Station Eleven too.

Found a youtube version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdZFgbbIZuI

fritzelly

I'm finding the future story very disjointed and hard to follow - watching episode 8 and I was like why are they now at the airport

fritzelly

Right...so we had a meetup of the past and present storylines then in episode 9 we go back in to the past again

Some really bad editing/scripting on this show

Checking the shows writers - Emily St. John Mandel (listed first) one credit! Patrick Somerville - a few shows but not much under his belt

Executive story editor/written for television by - some unknown who has a couple of tv episodes behind her

Needed better pedigree for this show to work

satguy

The show jumps about in the timeline,, but it's a slow show,, so not too hard to twig where the jump has landed.

Spoiler Warning

The birth scene and mother death, lets you know exactly where you are in the timeline.. "there is no before" ..

All in all ,, 10/10 and 9 episodes in = Happy ..

fritzelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118431259#Comment_118431259

Have you read the book?

mountain

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118431260#Comment_118431260

Having read the book, it’s easier to keep track of what’s going on

jill_valentine

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118431256#Comment_118431256

Mandel was the book's author. She was not involved in the day to day writing. Cord Jefferson, ex Watchmen, Good Place and Succession was though.

Somerville worked on The Leftovers for two seasons and Maniac (which was a bit Marmite) and was a novelist before that. Several episodes as well as the overall direction were steered by Hiro Murai (director of, among other very hypey things, Donald Glover's This Is America video) and also by Jeremy Podeswa, who's a veteran director of stuff like Game of Thrones, True Detective, Boardwalk Empire, Handmaids Tale and Homeland.

Most of the rest of the episodes were directed by Helen Shaver, who at 70 something is both a former actress and a veteran director of decades, notably for Orphan Black, Westworld, Vikings, Person of Interest and Dead Like Me.

Whether you're down with the show's nonlinear style or AV tricks or whatever or not, it has about as much pedigree as it is possible for a show to have.

I genuinely don't find it difficult to follow the sequence of events if you pay attention. Ep 5 should have made it clear why they were heading for the airport - having been invited to the Museum twice at that point by a character we see then see in the airport flashbacks, and seeing Clark begin the Museum.

Ep 8 was the weakest of an otherwise excellent show though, and although Ep 9 was far stronger that has me worried about how the final episode is going to pull off the finish. That was an awful lot of time to waste on Clark, Elizabeth and Tyler, likely the least interesting members even of the 2040 cast, and I'm concerned that what I'm enjoying isn't what the show thinks I'm enjoying. There's a huge ton of stuff to close out in only an hour, including, inevitably, more emo Tyler stuff, and the second half of the season has had a lot less momentum than the really compelling first half.

yabadabado

I haven't read the book but I don't think it's difficult to follow the timeline.

jill_valentine

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118432464#Comment_118432464

Not so much here, but on twitter etc I think people are mistaking "Not having all the info yet" for being "confused". There are a lot of things the show deliberately presents out of context or out of order, particularly in relation to Kirsten's memories, so that you're shown firstly how she thinks about it and then how it actually happened. The show does sometimes ask you to trust that if it leaves something unexplained for now it'll come back around to it and that seems to throw people off.

It's not just regular viewers though, as an aside, the AV Club reviews in particular have been very odd. For example they complained it felt creepy that Kirsten was sleeping with the Conductor - something that at absolutely no point was implied - and thought a character died who hadn't, even though we saw them alive onscreen and people talked about them surviving later in the same episode.

I think maybe the show asks people to pay closer attention than we've gotten used to sometimes, but by ep 9 I don't think there are any major questions left about the timeline to this point.

Slydice

09: That was a good episode.

Spoiler Warning

He didn't leave her!!! He's still alive!!! I hope they meet!!

I swear I lept when the wolf pounced! I thought he was a goner! Think I was influenced by the bear attack in The Revenant in my mind while watching.

That was so uplifting seeing all the mothers and the babies.

Then so sad about Rose. 😥 She was only on screen for such a short amount of time but made such an impression!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118431259#Comment_118431259

There is no before!

Again, this episode, the actress who plays lil Kirsten! All the scenes were so well done. That reaction when

Spoiler Warning

Jeevan said about the play 😟

yabadabado

Watched episode 9 ,there seems to be an awful lot of loose ends to tie up in the last episode.

Is it longer episode ?

Slydice

Can't see anything obvious on it. The imdb page has it at 45mins but that might just not be updated: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10579934/

maybe a lot of stuff goes down real fast.. or maybe it's a longer episode

gmisk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118431256#Comment_118431256

I don't think that's fair, Patrick Somerville has some great credits like writing episodes of the leftovers and think he is involved with made for love which is terrific, he also created Maniac which was insanely well received.

In fairness I think it is beautifully directed and I would say it is a really difficult book to adapt. It has grown on me as a show.

fritzelly

And so it ends with a whimper