Pluribus season 1 review: "Easily one of the year's best dramas"

This review is spoiler-free.

The new show from Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan arrives shrouded in mystery, with only a brief logline to tantalize us: "The most miserable person on Earth must save the world from happiness."

That, as it happens, is a very literal description of this smart, strange, unmistakably Gilligan-esque drama. Pluribus (a Latin word, meaning "of many") is a science fiction drama starring the terrific Rhea Seehorn, whose Kim Wexler gradually became the heart and soul of Bad-spin-off Better Call Saul, even as her character slipped further into darkness. And that's about all we can reveal, if you're intending to stay fully spoiler-free.

For everyone else, we can say that Pluribus is about a lot of different things: loneliness, responsibility, consent, grief, communism, the relationship between artists and their audience, AI (tangentially), self-loathing, and drones. There are quite a lot of drones.

More specifically, it follows Carol Sturka (Seehorn), a successful romance author with a fairly jaded view of her own work and the audience that pays for her luxurious lifestyle. When an alien virus unexpectedly transforms humanity into a global hive mind, however, she finds herself alone, one of only a small number of people worldwide not connected to this gestalt. She immediately sets out to try and find a way to restore individuality to humanity, whatever the cost.

Is resistance futile?

Now, you and I might naturally bristle at the thought of being co-opted into a Borg-style hive mind, but perhaps the most interesting thing about Pluribus is the even-handed way it examines the concept.

After an opening episode that fully leans into Invasion of the Bodysnatchers imagery, the show settles into a quieter and more thoughtful groove. Humanity instantly achieves world peace, while "the Joined" seem to be ruthlessly ethical in their approach to life, no longer slaughtering animals for food and switching all non-emergency power off at night to reduce energy consumption. They're friendly and, it seems, blissfully happy.

The same cannot be said of Carol who, in her quest to "save" the world, becomes a classically Gilligan anti-hero. She bristles and rails against those around her while also relying on them to provide her with food, carry out various tasks at her command, and even help her fumbling attempts to start a resistance. She is in many ways a hypocrite, though one with a fairly righteous reason for feeling so personally aggrieved given that her agent – and romantic partner – Helen (Miriam Shor) died in the Joining.

Much of the season revolves around this sudden absence in Carol's life as she grapples with a very personal loss, as well as the more nebulous pain of seeing the entire world change around her.

As the show progresses, the morality of Carol's stance grows ever murkier. Episode two reveals the heavy price that has been paid by the Joined for the "greatest day in the history of humanity," but also makes it clear that Carol herself is a threat. Consent becomes a pressing issue, with the Joined seemingly willing to go to any length to make Carol and the few other individuals happy. At times, the show feels like a protracted thought experiment, probing at the idea of the individual versus the collective and taking it to sometimes absurd extremes.

All of which probably makes Pluribus sound very heavy, but the show retains Gilligan's taste for surprising cold opens, grand set pieces, and moments of outright comedy, along with a dash of Dawn of the Dead-style wish-fulfilment. It's a fun and tactile series rather than a purely cerebral experience.

A true one-off

Will Pluribus be a Breaking Bad-level sensation? That feels unlikely. It's a strange, idiosyncratic series – a sort of post-apocalypse thriller minus the actual apocalypse. It's epic in scope, with plenty of globe-trotting in these first seven episodes, but also intimate in focus, with long, largely dialogue-free sequences of the Joined happily going about their business.

It also hinges to an unusual extent on Seehorn's great central performance, rather than an ensemble cast. Other characters grow in prominence as the show progresses – with one, introduced later in the run, adding an ominous tone to the back half of the season – but these first episodes really are Carol's story.

That's not to say it's obtuse or inaccessible. This is easily one of the year's best and most enjoyable US dramas, and a distinctive, singular vision. In an era where small screen science fiction is mainly characterized by franchise spin-offs, and adaptations of established properties, Pluribus is – like its protagonist – truly one-of-a-kind.

Pluribus season 1 is streaming on Apple TV from November 7. For more, check out our guide to the most exciting upcoming movies, and the best Apple TV shows.