Ever the disruptor, Netflix is set to premiere The Rain, the streaming services’ own post-apocalyptic survival drama, in time to mess with the ratings of Fear the Walking Dead and The 100. All episodes of the series will drop in early May, giving viewers the chance to binge yet another take on the end of the world and the ethical choices survivors must inevitably make while standing atop the ash heap of society.
Viewers have been in this situation before, but The Rain offers a unique wrinkle to the catastrophe that wipes out most of humankind — it comes in the form of a virus that’s carried by the rain. That angle is both unique and somewhat hokey, but, hey, at least it’s not zombies. The Rain is also the first Danish original series for the streaming service, which should give it enough of an international flavor that alone will make the series worth checking out.
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The trailer does a decent jobs setting up the circumstances of the story, and it offers some chilling (and chilly) glimpses at a desolate Scandinavian world, but the official synopsis offers more details as to what the series is actually about. Check it out below:
“Six years after a brutal virus carried by the rain wipes out nearly the entire population of Scandinavia, two Danish siblings emerge from the safety of their bunker to find all remnants of civilization gone. Soon they join a group of other young survivors and together they set out on a danger-filled quest through abandoned Scandinavia, searching for any sign of life.
Set free from their collective past and societal rules, the group has the freedom to be who they want to be. In their struggle for survival, they discover that even in a post-apocalyptic world there’s still love, jealousy, and many of the coming of age dilemmas they thought they’d left behind with the disappearance of the world they once knew.
Who will you be when the rain comes?”
Though it’s playing around with familiar and mature themes, the series seems to skew more toward a younger demographic, which increases its tonal similarities to The 100. But the idea that the series also doubles as a coming-of-age story makes for an intriguing wrinkle in the usual story centered on adults following the decimation of the world’s population.
The Rain is the latest in Netflix’s plan for total world domination, one that has the welcome side effect of introducing American audiences to some terrific international shows. Whether or not The Rain will be of the same quality as Dark or, say, Babylon Berlin remains to be seen, but it certainly looks ready to become many subscribers’ next apocalyptic obsession.
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The Rain will be streaming on Netflix on May 4, 2018.