Long Train Running

After almost derailing, the TV adaptation of Snowpiercer finally arrives

IF YOU KNOW SNOWPIERCER, IT’S most likely from the 2013 film directed by Bong Joon-ho and starring Chris Evans. But that film’s premise was actually adapted from the 1982 French graphic novel Le Transperceneige – which is also very much the inspiration for the TV adaptation that has just premiered in the US, and is about to hit the UK.

“When I heard about the job, I went back to the graphic novels, and I explored them for some of the big ideas, the philosophy and the leaps of imagination,” executive producer/ showrunner Graeme Manson tells Red Alert. “And I wanted to keep the series [as] an action-adventure, like the movie.”

The premise is that in our ecologically ruined near-future, the remnants of humanity have escaped the global frozen wasteland aboard a self-sufficient super train, Snowpiercer, that endlessly travels on a circular track to nowhere. Inside its 1,001 cars reside the wealthy 1%, the workers who make it all run, and one car full of the poor – who, having fought their way on board, are very much an afterthought.

Where the TV show distinguishes its take on the mythology is by introducing a murder mystery that plucks poor “Tailie” Andre Layton (Daveed Diggs) out of his dire situation and into the cars he’s never seen. Knowing Layton has expertise as a former homicide detective, train concierge Melanie Cavill (Jennifer Connelly) enlists him to help solve some serial murders they’re trying to keep secret.