Would you like an atom bomb? I'm gonna have to get back to you on that.

Continuing my trip up Empire's top 20 TV shows of 2025

#7 :  Pluribus

You kind of want to hate Vince Gilligan, don’t you? Not content with creating two of the best TV shows ever made with Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, the man has somehow managed to go three for three with this audaciously weird post-apocalyptic sci-fi. Conceived, in part, as a showcase for Rhea Seehorn’s prodigious acting talents (she criminally failed to scoop a single Emmy for her phenomenal turn in BCS), this quirky tale sees humanity afflicted with an alien virus that combines everyone’s consciousness into a single, blissfully happy hive mind. Everyone, that is, except 13 survivors, scattered across the globe, including curmudgeonly romantasy author Carol Sturka, who finds herself faced with a global collective hell bent on… making her happy? It’s an absolutely wild premise but it’s Gilligan’s deliberate, often oblique style of storytelling that makes it so captivating. Seehorn is, as you’d expect, magnetic, often carrying the show single-handed through large stretches of solo screen time, though its her crabby interactions with ‘everyone’ that make for some genuinely hilarious deadpan moments. An absolute original, Plur1bus is entirely unlike anything else on television. Do not miss it under any circumstances.

I'm still slowly working my way through Breaking Bad with the intention to move on to Better Call Saul, but there was such a buzz about this that I had no option other than to drop everything and concentrate on it - it helped that it felt right up my street, because I do love me a bit of high-concept sci-fi.

And, for the most part, I loved it. The concept is as explained above but tbh you're better off knowing absolutely nothing about it and just marvelling at the way that a relatively complex idea is introduced and explained pretty clearly - and then the fun (and not so much fun) that can be had when you work within the boundaries set up by it. Some of the avenues explored (and related outcomes) are reasonably obvious but others are way more left-field and make you think "oooh - I'd never have thought of that!". 

My only quibble (and I was certainly not alone in this) is that the pacing does get extremely slow in some of the middle episodes - none of it is exactly rushed but there are episodes you are left feeling "What is the point to all this? Just get a move on!". Fortunately this phase does pass and things pick up to give us a cracking ending which is heartbreaking whilst also making you laugh (there are considerably more laughs throughout than you might expect) - and sets up season two nicely.

The whole thing was created with Rhea Seehorn in mind and large swathes of many of the episodes pass without anyone else appearing on screen, so she has some heavy lifting to do here and she makes it appear effortless. Carol is an interesting character - "curmudgeonly" is a fine word for her, but she's capable of being very happy within her curmudgeonliness and it's a credit to both the writing and acting that you totally believe in her behaviour throughout. 

For the first half of the season, the only other main roles are played by Karolina Wydra who is Zosia, one of the hive mind who is tasked with interacting with Carol and Miriam Shor, who plays Carol's wife. Both are mostly tasked with interacting with and placating Carol - Karolina takes the plaudits for me with a very interesting and nuanced portrayal of a single-minded automaton, but Miriam is in it a lot more than you'd expect for someone who dies pretty early (this is a very minor spoiler). In the second half of the season, we get one more main(ish) role for Carlos-Manuel Vesga as Manousos, who is another person not affected by the virus - and he spends an awful lot of time interacting with absolutely no-one, but he does it well enough.

So it's (mostly) well written and it's (entirely) well acted - so what does it look like? Well, it's looks ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS. The concept of the show means that Carol spends a lot of time by herself which means that a lot of time has been spent getting shots where no-one else is present - roads, towns, hospitals, shops, airports, you name it. And so the general look is a-maze-ing (and must have taken a whole load of work). There's also the episode where Manousos attempts to navigate the Darien Gap (which is not a great idea, kids - Wikipedia it) - there's a whole lotta nature there and it's very much on show (although I'm sure it was filmed somewhere else).

So, basically, in case you can't tell, I liked this a lot. If you like your sci-fi to have an intriguing central concept which is then used well (we've got another example coming up very soon) and you've somehow (very foolishly) not seen this, then get yourself to Apple TV and correct that situation immediately.

#9 - Decent, but not as good as season 1