Ivan Radford | On 12, May 2024

There aren’t many names more exciting to see in the list of credits than Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij. After working together on Sound of My Voice, The East and The OA, the creative duo are four for four with this timely, thoughtful crime drama.

The series is a decidely more conventional affair than their previous Netflix series, a dizzying and ambitious foray into interdimensionality by way of a psychic octopus, but the straightforward wrapper contains a wonderfully complex subject – the role of technology in modern society – and the pair perfectly balance old-fashioned murder-mystery thrills with contemporary resonance.

The seven-part thriller follows Darby (Emma Corrin), a hacker who spends her days investigating unsolved, overlooked murders of women. Unexpectedly, she finds herself invited to a remote retreat in Iceland, where tech guru Andy Ronson (Clive Owen) is holding a gathering to talk about technology and humanity’s suvvival. It soon turns out her invitation is courtesy of Lee (Marling), Andy’s wife, who is a former hacker who follows Darby’s work. But when an attendeed dies on the first night of the retreat, Darby becomes an unwitting detective on the job.

The ensemble of guests are a motley bunch across a range of disciplines and experiences, including dedicated filmmaker (Jermaine Fowler) and seasoned doctor Sian (Alice Braga). The most intriguing of all is Bill (the always-brilliant Harris Dickinson), Darby’s fellow cold case sleuth who is now estranged for reasons we eventually discover. Each of them potentially suspicious or at the very least difficult to read, but what soon becomes clear is that the show’s strength is partly watching Darby piece together the puzzle of who she is and why she does what she does.

Emma Corrin is wonderful as the waif-like genius, who is at once vulnerable and dizzyingly smart – “No one sees a 24-year-old girl coming,” Darby obseves. Corrin brings a quiet self-belief and conviction to their withdrawn investigator, who’s as wary and cynical as they are idealistic and hopeful. Somewhere between Hercule Poirot and Lisbeth Salander, they’re the perfect lead actor for a Marling and Batmanglij project, which requires an earnest quality to bring its sincere ruminations to the screen without snark.

Clive Owen is a brilliant foil to Corrin’s wide-eyed outsider, bringing a surprising weakness of his own to the familiar role of a sinister tycoon. He’s paranoid and obsessive underneath his chilled and chilling persona, and Owen’s closeted woundedness makes his potential villain much more than a token bad guy. His relationship with Lee is fittingly complicated and Marling’s performance is a nuanced and understated cornerstone for the show’s exploration of wealth, privacy, privilege and power.

The beautifully isolated location underpins the niggling feeling of existential loneliness, and Marling and Batmanglij direct the events with a soulful darkness. Reminscent of the doom-laden tension of Sarah Phelps’ And Then There Were None, they remix all the usual notes of a crime drama, from masked assailants and barely concealed secrets to coded nighttime messages. But the Scandi noir atmosphere is fused with the modern sheen of a neon-lit hotel, blending snowbound gloom and individual survival with a clinical lack of humanity.

Holding everything together is Andy’s AI assistant, Ray, a cutting-edge invention that monitors every guest’s room – a plot device that serves as both an unsettling glimpse of the future and a handy tool for Darby’s detecting. Throw in a heated dissection of the climate crisis and a subplot involving robot ants and the result is a uniquely forward-thinking meditation on power, injustice and romance. At its hearts are such pertinent questions as how much one person can change the world and how much they want to make it better or worse – and A Murder at the End of the World reflects on the answers with a patience that’s utterly riveting. Bring on the next Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij joint please.

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