The work of Brit Marling, the screenwriter and actress behind Netflix’s 2016 puzzle box The OA, can only be described as interestingly flawed. That series, her debut as a showrunner, was a saga of dimension-hopping and imprisonment, co-starring Phyllis from The Office and featuring a school shooting thwarted by synchronized dance. And that’s barely scratching the surface of its weirdness. That Marling was the creative force behind the cult-hit films Sound of My Voice and Another Earth (both 2011) merely adds to her intrigue. Like all artists with a slightly too specific vision, Marling produces content that repels and entices in equal measure. Yet it’s hard not to think she could create something thrilling if she aimed only a little more broadly.
That possibility may well have come to fruition with A Murder at the End of the World, Marling’s fifth collaboration with co-creator Zal Batmanglij and a sure contender for best limited series of the year. Now streaming on Hulu at the deliciously old-fashioned rate of one episode per week, the new show is True Detective meets And Then There Were None, with a dash of techno-pessimism thrown in for good measure. Or is that techno-optimism? Like the best dramas of ideas, A Murder at the End of the World hesitates to referee its characters’ debates, preferring to let convictions spin into the ether and collide. I know, but will try not to say, whom I loved and hated while absorbing the show’s seven intricately constructed episodes. The viewer is sure to have his or her own opinions.
