the Leftovers.
HBO’s the Leftovers is a deceptively high concept series. On October 14th 2011, 2% of the world’s population suddenly disappear. Which doesn’t sound terribly catastrophic until you do the maths. In a village of 100 people living in 25 houses, two of those house will have suddenly lost someone, literally into thin air, never to see them again, without ever finding out how or why.
Understandably, the suburban town we find ourselves in, in upstate New York, has been utterly devastated, as has every other corner of the country. The Departure, as it’s referred to, is effectively a What If addressed to the Evangelicals.
Father and daughter.
Evangelical Christians believe that the Rapture is imminent, by which they mean they expect it to occur within the decade. When it does, the chosen few will be spirited up to Heaven, and the rest of us will be left behind. The Leftovers asks us to imagine, what would that actually look like, in practical terms.
Except it doesn’t. Because it’s even worse than that, as no one can identify anything that might connect those who were spirited away – if that was what happened to them – any more than they can explain why they, the leftovers, were not. So nobody can be sure exactly what happened on that fateful day, and all too many characters have their own particular theory.
The result is a post-apocalyptic landscape where heightened religious fervour merges with unmanageable guilt and suspicion, so that everyone and everything, however apparently mundane, is viewed with unimaginable anxiety. Dogs have become feral, deer conversely wander in and out of houses. Messiahs materialise, cults are formed and everyone’s addicted to prescription drugs and alcohol. Smoking increases, and there’s a general sense of lawlessness. But more than anything else, families fall apart.
Oh dear.
The series revolves, just about, around the figure of Justin Theroux, the local cop whose marriage fell apart around the Departure, and whose father, who was the chief before him, is currently hospitalised in an institution. But as often as not, an episode will focus on a peripheral character. A pastor, a member of a cult, a woman who lost her husband and both her children, immediately after arguing with her youngest, all of whom are connected to Theroux in differing ways.
The Leftovers was aired on HBO and is effectively the follow up to Lost for Damon Lindelof. And whatever he might say publically, he clearly has leant many a lesson from that less than satisfying experience. The principle improvement is scope. This is a far more focused affair, homing in on a much smaller group of characters.
Lyv Tyler.
Ironically, what this allows for is a far more experimental approach to storytelling. The Leftovers is surprisingly fluid and nebulous, which only adds to its sense of eerie dread. None of us know what’s going to happen next any more than any of the characters do. There’s a particularly memorable dream sequence – almost impossible after David Lynch – where you only realise that what you’ve been watching is in fact a dream at exactly the same moment as the character does, as they wake up out of it in a panic. Which is staggering hard to pull off.
Impressively, seasons 2 and 3 are, if anything, even better. And, best of all, and he clearly did learn this from his Lost experience, there only a total of 3 series. The only blot on an otherwise perfect copybook is the series’ finale. Apart from the damp squib that is that concluding episode, the Leftovers is a triumph.
You can see the excellent trailer for the Leftovers here
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