Pluribus review: Breaking Bad showrunner’s sci-fi takes on happiness

Pluribus
Vince Gilligan, Apple TV

If I asked you to name the best episode of a TV show (as I often ask my patient friends), you could do worse than pick “Ozymandias”. One of the final episodes of Breaking Bad, an extraordinary drama about a chemistry teacher who starts cooking meth after being diagnosed with cancer, it is a total and unimpeachable triumph of writing, acting and directing.

Being part of a single, perfect episode of a TV show is a fine legacy. Creating two fantastic series – Breaking Bad and its sister show Better Call Saul, which changed the landscape of the medium – is something else entirely. Which is to say that Vince Gilligan, showrunner par excellence, has little to prove with Pluribus, his new sci-fi series for Apple TV.

Having seen the first six episodes of the nine-part season, I can say that it has been made with the utmost confidence, and doesn’t hold your hand through the twists and turns of its deceptively rich premise.

Carol (Rhea Seehorn, a veteran of Better Call Saul) is the author of Winds of Wycaro, a popular book series of pirate-themed bodice-rippers. Writing about sinewy forearms and stiff mizzenmasts has bought her a comfortable life, but she is unfulfilled. There are, however, worse things than creative malaise, as she is about to discover.

One night during a book tour with her agent and partner Helen (Miriam Shor), everyone around Carol stops dead in their tracks, then breaks into spasms. When their seizures end, they are very different. Carol, it transpires, is one of the vanishingly few people who are unaffected. It isn’t clear what happened, but it probably has something to do with a mysterious radio signal first detected 439 days earlier. The base-four pattern in the signal is repeating every 78 seconds and is broadcast from 600 light years away.

Carol isn’t aware of this, only that practically everyone on the planet is elated, free from the petty gripes of humanity. What’s more, they will move heaven and Earth to get her to join them.

I understand why they are so obsessed with Carol. She’s glorious in her grumpiness, even before she becomes the most miserable person on the planet. Indeed, she reminded me of Paul Sheldon in Misery, held prisoner by an apparently benevolent fan – but in Carol’s case, she is monitored by billions. Her fellow humans will serve her unflinchingly until they figure out why she is different and how to fix that. Soon, Carol starts to learn the rules of her new reality, realising she isn’t quite as powerless as she might seem.

There are many satisfying ideas in Pluribus. Can a society become a utopia without the consent of its citizens? Is it still a utopia if even one person feels trapped? The most promising thing, beyond Seehorn’s powerhouse performance, is that it is unapologetically character-driven, the kind of show that devotes half an episode to someone trying to bury a body. Nothing is rushed, but nor is anything superfluous. It is building to something, and when you expect it to zig, it zags.

It says a lot that, despite seeing most of the first season, I have no idea where Pluribus is heading. I imagine many viewers will be put off by such uncertainty, and the show’s leisurely pacing could also be divisive. But I found it thrilling that Pluribus hits none of the obvious notes of a big-budget sci-fi series.

With a guaranteed second season, I have every faith it will produce its own “Ozymandias”, once it gathers steam.

Bethan also recommends…

Breaking Bad
Vince Gilligan

If you need convincing of Vince Gilligan’s credentials, watch his first masterpiece. The story of a chemistry teacher who turns to cooking meth, it’s a five-act tragedy and a character study of one of TV’s greatest antiheroes.

Outlander
Adapted by Ronald D. Moore

There’s a great moment in Pluribus where a character rearranges a bookstore so her partner’s books are more visible. Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series ends up on a bottom shelf. I can’t speak for the books, but the TV adaptation is swoon-worthy.

Bethan Ackerley is a subeditor at New Scientist. She loves sci-fi, sitcoms and anything spooky. Follow her on X @inkerley