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I’ve selected ten TV series that have intrigued me, moved me, and stayed with me for various reasons that touch on: abuse of justice, including eco-justice and environmental abuse; technology use and abuse; and the effects and horrors of climate change.

Some are well known; others not so well known. All approach storytelling with a serious dedication to depth of character, important themes, realistic world building, and excellent portrayal by actors. The world-building is extremely well done—in some cases rivalling Ridley Scott’s best—with convincing portrayals of worlds that are at times uncanny in their realism. Worlds that reflect story from an expansive landscape to the mundane minutiae of daily life: like the cracked phone device of Detective Miller in The Expanse or the dirty fingernails of engineer Juliette Nichols in the Down Deep of Silo. Stories vary in their treatment of important themes from whimsical and often humorous ironies to dark and moody treatises on existential questions. In my opinion, these TV series rival the best movies out there, often reflecting large budgets (but not always) and a huge commitment by producers. The ten TV series I’ve selected in this series come from around the world: Brazil, Germany, France, Norway, Canada and the United States.

In Part 2, I focus on five TV series that explore issues to do with resource allocation, adaptations to climate change and corporate / government biopolitics.

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INCORPORATED: A Post-Climate-Change Corporate Scrabble for Resource & Power

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This American science fiction thriller offers a chilling glimpse of a post-climate change dystopia. Created by David and Alex Pastor and produced by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Ted Humphrey and Jennifer Todd, the show (filmed in Toronto, Canada) opens in 82 °F Milwaukee in November 2074 after environmental degradation, widespread famine and mismanagement have bankrupted governments. We learn later that Milwaukee Airport served as a FEMA climate relocation centre that resembles an impoverished shantytown. In the wake of the governments demise, a tide of multinational corporations has swept in to control 90% of the globe and ratified the 29^th amendment, granting them total sovereignty.

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Corporations fight a brutal covert war for market share and dwindling natural resources. Like turkey vultures circling overhead, they position themselves for what’s left after short-sighted government regulations, lack of corporate check and FEMA mismanagement have ‘had their way’ with the planet. The world is now a very different place. There is no Spain or France. Everything south of the Loire is toxic desert; New York City reduced to a punch line in a joke. Reykjavik and Anchorage are sandy beach destinations and Norway is the new France—at least where champagne vineyards are concerned. Asia and Canada are coveted for their less harsh climates.

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Those who work for the corporations live in privilege behind the sentried walls of the Green Zones. The rest fend for themselves with scarcity in the contaminated slums of the Red Zones.

Incorporated is an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ mixture of realizable technological advances, gadgetry and thrilling—if not chilling—consequence: like self-driving cars, intelligent writsbands, surrogate pregnancies and remote deliveries, genetic testing of ‘inferiors’, DNA theft, and malware sabotage.

Like a Seurat painting, the subtle details of the show change with perspective and build into a subliminal realism you can’t shake: from the food porn in the opening scene to eating rats in climate relocation camps or drinking dirty Red Zone water that costs $5. In Cost Containment we learn that Spiga competitor Inazagi is developing salt-tolerant crops that, like the mangroves, will thrive on irrigated seawater in the deserts left by an exploitive short-sighted America: Iowa, Missouri, Kansas—all the dust storm states. In a later episode, a murdered corporate executive is found by two dowsers on the dried lakebed of Missouri’s Lake Lotawana. We hear about the “oil wars” in Capetown.

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The first episode (Vertical Mobility) opens to a corporate ‘traitor’ being dragged into “the quiet room”, rumoured to be a torture chamber run by taciturn head of security Julian Morse (Dennis Haysbert). The scene shifts to the Green zone suburban house of corporate climber Ben Larson (Sean Teale). As he prepares to go to work, the news streams of hurricanes breaching levies; Canada building a wall to stem the tide of illegal American climate refugees–12 million already there; offshore oil rigs in the waters of the former Arctic ice cap; and finally to the “terrorist” bombing of the R&D lab of biochemical giant Spiga, where Ben works. Spiga, we later learn, plays the same games as Monsanto and Nestle to ensure profits at the expense of well-being.

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Aaron Pruner of Screener TV asks, “Could climate change push us into a collapsed society, informed consistently by the ongoing threat of class warfare? Will we eventually be separated by electric fences and really big walls [like Incorporated]? Are fear and greed going to be the currencies of our reality? These burning questions should sound far-fetched and silly, but as we watch tale of Incorporated unfold, it’s hard not to wonder what our own future will bring.” Far-fetched and silly? Is it any more far-fetched and silly than voting in a president who claims that the Chinese invented climate change to make American manufacturing non-competitive?

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