Pluribus Review

The premise is the best original idea television has had in years. An alien signal turns almost everyone on earth into one serene collective, thirteen people are immune, and one of them is a bad tempered romance novelist who now has the entire species asking her, very politely, what would make her happy. Gilligan uses it to invert his own career. Breaking Bad watched a mild man choose harm. Pluribus watches a hostile woman defend her misery as the last piece of human property worth owning, surrounded by helpers who will not argue back.

Rhea Seehorn is extraordinary in it and the awards agreed, taking the Emmy for lead actress in a drama alongside five other wins for the show, a Golden Globe and a Peabody. Critics were near unanimous across a very large sample. The shooting is Gilligan at his most controlled, wide empty compositions of a world that is tidy because nobody is fighting over anything. The one real complaint is pace: the middle episodes restage the same standoff with small variations, and the season closes on a question rather than an answer. A second season is ordered.