Station Eleven

Moved from Toronto to Chicago, then shot next door to Toronto

Most of the novel's Year Zero takes place in Toronto, and the adaptation moved it to Chicago, the home city of its creator Patrick Somerville. Filming started there in January 2020. The pandemic then sent the production north: from 1 February 2021 it was shooting in Mississauga, the city that borders Toronto.

Hiro Murai directed the first episode, Wheel of Fire, which brought Emmy nominations for his direction and for Christian Sprenger's photography. Dan Romer wrote the score, nominated in turn for the finale. German reviewers noticed something the premise does not promise: the Süddeutsche Zeitung called the series a plea for art in a time of crisis.

The Story

Twenty years after a flu pandemic brought down civilisation, a troupe of travelling performers keeps working, led on stage by Kirsten Raymonde. She was eight and playing in King Lear the night Arthur Leander died in front of her and the outbreak began. An audience member that night, Jeevan Chaudhary, took care of her.

Emily St. John Mandel published the novel in 2014 and is credited as a producer on the adaptation. Somerville changed two things that matter: Jeevan and Kirsten have far more to do with each other than on the page, and Tyler, who leads the violent cult the troupe runs into, is given a way back rather than left a villain.

The Ideal Audience

HBO Max put out the first three of ten episodes on 16 December 2021 and the last four weeks later. Rotten Tomatoes has it at 98 per cent, Metacritic at 81 out of 100 from twenty-seven critics.

Seven Emmy nominations followed, none of them a win, though Mackenzie Davis and the series took two Critics' Choice Super Awards. Common Sense Media sets it at fourteen and up: hospitals full of the sick, bodies, heroin, cocaine, blunt language. That is a grim inventory for a series whose real subject is what people keep, not what they lose, and we would watch it for the decision that treats a theatre troupe as infrastructure.