Chicago Tribune

‘Extrapolations’ review: The screenwriter of ‘Contagion’ takes on climate change and the future

Daveed Diggs stars in the third episode of Apple TV+’ s“ Extrapolations.”.

What might our lives look like decades from now, when the effects of climate change have progressed even further? That’s the premise of “Extrapolations,” Apple TV+’s star-studded series from Scott Z. Burns.

Burns might be best known as the screenwriter of 2011′s “Contagion,” which anticipated many of the fears and outcomes of the pandemic. He’s doing something similar as it pertains to our ongoing climate disaster. Of flooding and fires. Or droughts and air so polluted that people must carry a personal oxygen supply with them. The series jumps forward over the course of eight episodes, beginning in the year 2037 — not that far in the future! — and ending in 2070.

It’s also a meditation on the evolution of technology, along with stubbornly entrenched corporate greed that is making the planet increasingly inhospitable to life.

There’s a lot to admire about the show’s ambitions, even if they’re not fully realized. The psychological fallout is palpable. A low-level despair and resignation has settled over

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