The Apple TV+ streaming platform continues to add new series to its extensive catalogue. If this week we had the pleasure of reuniting with our beloved characters from Ted Lasso, today it is the turn of A challenging future (Extrapolations), which leads us to understand the changes that could take place in the coming decades in light of the looming ecological disaster.
It consists of eight episodes lasting between 50 and 60 minutes and it is not completely anthological because there are characters whose stories we have followed for a long time, although there are others that only appear in one episode and have the greatest prominence.
Apple TV+ has released the first three episodes on Friday, March 17, and will broadcast the rest at the rate of a new episode every Friday until the broadcast is complete on April 21.
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Trailer of A Challenging Future, the new Apple TV+ series with a luxury cast
One of the main attractions of A challenging future is to have a star-studded cast among which stand out Meryl Streep, Edward Norton, Diane Lane, Ben Harper, Marion Cotillard, Tobey Maguire, Indira Vharma, David Schwimmer, Eiza González, Matthew Rhys, Sienna Miller or Murray Bartlett among many others.
An incredible dream team for a series created by the writer, director and executive producer Scott Z. Burnswell known for previous works such as Contagion or An Inconvenient Truth.
The point of view, therefore, is more than clear and the final function of the series is also: create awareness around the importance of avoiding global warming, rising sea levels and extreme weather events.
We are shown mass extinctions, large fires, floods caused by polar melting, migrations due to climatic causes, humanitarian emergencies…
These are eight intertwined stories about love, work, faith and family that take place in different parts of the globe and explore the intimate decisions that must be made when the planet is changing faster than people.
Each story is different, but it goes to show the value of resistance and self-responsibility when it comes to positioning yourself against something with such brutal power of destruction. We see entrepreneurs eager to profit from new forms of business, but also activists and experts doing their bit to prevent the system from collapsing.
A challenging future – Image gallery I (7 images)
A pertinent but boomerang effect sermon
A challenging future it had the potential and the means to become an environmental Years and Years, capable of taking us to the apocalyptic future that experts predict if there are no substantial changes at the level of large-scale political commitments.
It shares with that excellent series various formal and thematic aspects such as advancing over long periods of time, specifically taking us from 2037 to the year 2070.
However, it dwells a lot on the personal circumstances of the characters and often loses focus on what is really important, which is not so much individual faith as the series of catastrophic decisions that can lead us to a gradual and agonizing collapse in which the inequalities will not stop growing.
A challenging future – Image gallery II (8 images)
That is to say, it has an instructive tone to spare (which ultimately can achieve the opposite of what is proposed) and it lacks a level of analysis and depth on issues that can really put us against the ropes.
In the end, it makes us witnesses of the collapse of natural ecosystems and the rise of human ambition, always trying to take advantage, but it does not finish soaking us to the point of moving us to action because the denunciation of excesses is too tepid. and something Manichaean.
Little can be objected at a formal level to a series like A challenging future with excellent production design: It is the third partnership between Apple TV+ and Media Res, following the production of the Emmy, SAG and Critics Choice Award-winning The Morning Show and the AFI Award-winning series Pachinko.
