The early word has been astoundingly positive, but everyone agrees it is show most viewers will only be able to stomach watching once.
A few years back, we watched and endured the brilliant Chernobyl, a real-life horror that bracingly told a vitally important story of an actual disaster.
This month, it looks like a new series is going to follow in that show’s award-winning footsteps.
Five Days At Memorial has screened some episodes early for American critics, and the early word is that it is tremendous, but also an incredibly difficult watch.
Starring Vera Farmiga (The Conjuring), Cherry Jones (24), Cornelius Smith Jr. (Whitney), and Adepero Oduye (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier), the show’s official plot synopsis is as follows: “Based on actual events from Hurricane Katrina, Five Days at Memorial tells the story of the exhausted caregivers at a New Orleans hospital who were forced to make heart-wrenching decisions amidst the storm’s aftermath.”
The series has been adapted for the screen by Oscar-winning screenwriter John Ridley (12 Years A Slave), and he directs and co-writes the series’ eight episodes with Carlton Cuse (Lost).
As we’d mentioned above, if you’re looking for an entertaining time, then you might need to look elsewhere…
Collider – “From the first episode, the viewer can feel a sense of foreboding hanging over both the hospital staff and the citizens of New Orleans, as well as the heartbreak of realising that none of these people were remotely prepared for what they were about to face.”
The Playlist – “Five Days at Memorial is about as bleak as television gets. As a medical thriller, it’s extremely compelling. As a true story, it’s almost overwhelmingly punishing and nearly entirely devoid of hope.”
Slash Film – “The series ramps up the tension as the storm gets worse, but the first episode will perhaps be the calmest of the bunch, because what follows grows progressively dire and so disturbing that it had me squirming, wildly uncomfortable with what I was watching.”
Entertainment Weekly – “Five Days at Memorial is a high-quality, extremely grim retelling of a low point in American history. This is not a series that anyone is going to enjoy watching, for what I hope are obvious reasons. But it’s a show that absolutely should be watched, if only because in the 17 years since Hurricane Katrina made landfall, our planet’s climate crisis has just gotten worse.”
The first three episodes of Five Days At Memorial will premiere on Apple TV+ on Friday, 12 August, with the rest of the series arriving weekly after that.
Clip via Apple TV
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