If you’ve ever wondered what a Gregg Araki TV series would be like, the answer turns out to be… much like a Gregg Araki movie. Except it’s delivered in 10 nifty half-hour episodes. If you’ve yet to enter the Araki-verse, the writer/director specialises in frothy but arty indie comedies involving attractive young LA types having lots of sex while getting embroiled in shadowy cults that are usually revealed to be something to do with aliens and/or the end of the world.
Now Apocalypse, exec-produced by Steven Soderbergh, encompasses all those obsessions, as it follows aimless video-blogger Ulysses (Avan Jogia), and his hot friends and sex partners. These include best buddy Carly, an actress who works on the side as a live-cam girl, and room-mate Ford, a wannabe scriptwriter who’s dating enigmatic “astrobiologist” Severine, who theorises about the end of the world, while Ulysses has his own foreboding visions. After a hand-job from sexy musician Gabriel round the back of a diner, Ulysses imagines stars exploding in the sky and asks him if it felt “like the universe collapsed in on itself?” We’ve all been there.
Oh yes, there’s lots of sex. Episode 1 has two vividly filmed scenes of coitus interruptus, though no one in this show seems to mind being watched while having penetrative sex, and if the characters aren’t doing it, they’re at least planning sex, fantasizing about sex or discussing sex.
This is all perfectly well-made, candy-coloured fun as well as being a bang up-to-date exploration of 21st-century sexual identities (co-written by Araki with sex columnist Karley Sciortino), albeit one in which everyone looks amazing all the time. We’re just not sure it’s saying anything new. Especially if you’ve seen a Gregg Araki movie.