After more than 3 years in the making, TV fans around the world are rewarded, once again by the four time Emmy winner, Vince Gilligan. Moving from AMC to Apple TV+, with a huge budget increase, the TV genius moves away from everything that made him famous, by gifting the world a science fiction series like no others. Thanks to his first year as a screenwriter in the series X-flies (1993), the creative capacity of the Breaking Bad (2008) creator goes way beyond the drug thriller.
The story is exploited in the best possible way, since the entire plot is being set up in a first explosive episode. Aside from a very entertaining, well structured and philosophic story, Gilligan delivers a geopolitical statement through his characters from around the world. It is brilliant in the fact that we don't expect such commitment from a science fiction series, especially given that this criticism of the distribution of global wealth is done in parallel with the unfolding of the story, for the viewer to slowly understand it while he thinks deeply about how this show is intelligent.
Precisely, the story itself stands out for its relatively slow pace but which nevertheless holds up throughout the entirety of the nine episodes. As he had done magnificently with his previous series, Vince Gilligan juggles several intrigues which take place at different times and places, multiplying the questions of the viewers and giving them a good reason to stay until the end to understand that the hero of this story is perhaps not the person they have in mind.
In the middle of these masterpieces is another artistic phenomenon, the actress Rhea Seehorn offers, by far, the best presentation of the year
The quality of the production and cinematography justifies the slow pace and the $15 million budget per episode. In addition to being the creator, showrunner and screenwriter of each episode, Gilligan also directed the two first episodes and brought back his entire team of directors from Breaking Bad as well as the cinematographer from Better Call Saul (2015), to give the series that special, instantly recognisable touch. Thanks to the numerous locations of the episodes around the globe, the cinematography achieves a rare beauty, which also has the feat of using colour to convey the evolution of the story through the use of yellow and blue. In the middle of these masterpieces is another artistic phenomenon, the actress Rhea Seehorn offers, by far, the best presentation of the year, carrying some of the episodes on her own, each time translating the complex feelings of her character. Consequently she just, very recently, won the Critics Choice Award and the Golden Globe for her presentation, as her ex-colleagues from Better Call Saul said, she could interpret hundreds of emotions to perfection, justifying the fact that Gilligan wrote this role specifically for her.
I think now it's impossible not to admit it: painting has Léornardo Da Vinci, cinema has Stanley Kubrick, TV has Vince Gilligan.
With Plur1bus as his third TV show, Vince Gilligan showed the world of television how smart he is, how ingenious his ideas are and how there is no plot he can’t make dramatically interesting and cinematographically beautiful. In times where drama series are in total decline, where there is no longer any Game Of Thrones (2011) or Mad Men (2007) to compete with, this constitutes a TV show of the century. I think now it's impossible not to admit it: painting has Léornardo Da Vinci, cinema has Stanley Kubrick, TV has Vince Gilligan.