Most apocalypse stories run on a single question: who can out-shoot the bad guys when the lights go out? Station Eleven asks a much harder, more interesting question: after everything falls apart, what makes life worth living the next day?

Adapted from Emily St. John Mandel's novel, the series follows Kirsten, who survived the collapse as an eight-year-old child actor, and twenty years later travels with a nomadic caravan performing Shakespeare for surviving settlements. The tone is poetic, mysterious, and surprisingly warm, even when people are fighting for survival.

It earned its TV-MA rating through several sudden bursts of sharp violence, an unsettling cult plotline involving kids, and the blunt trauma of its opening pandemic collapse. For younger teens, the intensity will be overwhelming. For mature high schoolers who care about writing, performance, and philosophy, it stands as one of the best limited series ever put on television.