Vince Gilligan wins again with Pluribus

Say what you will about Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul creator Vince Gilligan, but there are few showrunners who are better at starting a series off with a bang. Who could forget the spectacle, from the pilot episode of Breaking Bad, of Bryan Cranston’s pants-less, intense-looking Walter White, addressing his family – and by extension, the audience – by saying “My name is Walter Hartwell White. I live at 308 Negra Arroyo Lane, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87104. To all law-enforcement entities, this is not an admission of guilt?” Or Bob Odenkirk’s half-hapless, half-sly Jimmy McGill, aka Saul Goodman, leading a black-and-white half-life in Omaha, Nebraska, as we slowly, inexorably observe the circumstances that have led to his downfall?

Gilligan has retained his Better Call Saul co-lead, the excellent Rhea Seehorn, for his latest Apple TV show, Pluribus, which is one of the strangest and most genre-mangling endeavors seen this year. Early previews and scuttlebutt suggested that this would be a dark comedy of sorts – think Severance but with an extraterrestrial twist – but the results, if the first episodes are anything to go by, are closer to a terrifying post-apocalyptic sci-fi horror, albeit shot through with Gilligan’s usual wit and assurance.

The narrative focuses on Seehorn’s jaded novelist Carol Sturka, a writer of commercially popular but spiritually sapping romantasy pap with such titles as The Winds of Wycaro. Sturkafinds herself one of the handful of people unaffected by a strange virus, simply known as “The Joining,” which either kills or infects virtually all the world’s population. Those who survive turn into smiley, frighteningly optimistic types who all share the same thoughts and can-do mindset. After her manager and partner, Helen, dies because of the virus, Carol retreats into a terrified inertia, only to become increasingly confused and angered by the shift in her neighbors and the world at large.

This is not so very far from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and the recent debacle of the Ice Cube-starring update of War of the Worlds, which doubled up as an advertisement for Amazon Prime and showed how easy it is to do these things badly. Yet Gilligan is, for a certain sector of fandom, someone who can do no wrong – readers with lengthy memories may recall that when Breaking Bad concluded in 2013, the ending was felt to be so finely judged that its fans took to social media to abuse Lost creator Damon Lindelof for having failed to land his own show in such an elegant way – and Pluribus has been one of 2025’s most eagerly anticipated new launches, not least because of the brilliant Seehorn. As Better Call Saul’s Kim Wexler, Jimmy’s foil and sometime-romantic partner, she gave that show heart and humanity in abundance, and those are both qualities that she brings to Pluribus.  

Without her, it might be a challenging, demanding experience. Gilligan has always been a master of deliberately paced storytelling that can occasionally verge on opaque. One of the frustrations of Better Call Saul was that it would sometimes feel so slow as to be positively tedious, and then it would roar back into life with a perfectly judged moment of tension, violence or jet-black comedy that would wake the viewer up from their doze. And even the sainted Breaking Bad, now enshrined as one of the finest American dramas ever made, could take its own sweet time getting to the point. Yet both series enjoy their popularity for a reason, and Pluribus looks as if it is going to be another winner from Gilligan, even if this kind of fascinating but difficult high-concept sci-fi may yet be a trickier sell to audiences than the continuing exploits of Saul Goodman.

Apple have finally got their act together when it comes to original content, and few would bet against this being yet another big Emmy and Golden Globe winner next year – especially, of course, for Seehorn, who may still be the most undersung actress of her generation. This should remedy that in no uncertain terms.