'Station Eleven,' like the Shakespeare that sustains it, is something of a miracle
"Station Eleven," whose first three episodes (of 10) premiered Thursday on HBO Max, is a post-post-apocalypse tale, set largely two decades into the future — 2040 by the series' timeline — and also just as and some time before a flu pandemic wipes out nearly everybody on Earth. The years of chaos have largely passed, and the survivors we meet, in the environs of the Great Lakes, live a largely communitarian, pastoral life, free from the usual neo-feudal warlords and Mad Max types; it is more Renaissance Faire than New Dark Ages.
Like Emily St. John Mandel's 2014 novel, on which it's based but from which it departs significantly in details, events, characters and characterizations, it jumps between periods to build out character relations and motivations, and to plant the seeds of coincidence that will flower into closure.
It is an action film nearly drained of action. There
