But star-studded ‘Extrapolations’ chokes on its own good intentions.
| CorrespondentTwo high-profile streaming series — Apple TV+’s climate-change spectacle “Extrapolations” and Amazon Prime’s cult-of-celebrity thriller “Swarm” — debut this week. And we have a clear favorite.
Already on a shaky mental foundation, Dre becomes more unhinged after her foster sister Marissa dies and she essentially slaps a target on the back of most anyone who crosses her path. Told in quick 30-minute bursts, “Swarm” takes you deep into the creepy mindset of Dre as she tries to insinuate herself next to her idol, lying and cheating and murdering to reach that goal.
“Extrapolations” does a bang-up job of splashing ice water into climate-change deniers’ faces, but it picks up a bullhorn and shouts and shouts its message, often reducing characters into speechifying pundits rather than human beings. To its credit, it is visually impressive and throws out distressing and pertinent facts that are worth heeding. It also features Meryl Streep voicing a lonely, pitiful whale in Episode 2. Can’t get better than that.
Episode 3 is the best of four ones I watched. That’s due, mostly, to the presence of Oakland native Daveed Diggs. The “Blindspotting” and “Hamilton” star gives a tempered performance, accentuating but never overstating the conflicted emotions with which his Miami rabbi Marshall Zucker grapples as he watches his South Florida temple take on more water. He soon realizes that the only hope for its salvation would be to compromise his own principles.
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