Riffing on the current spate of headlines about declining birth rates around the globe, Lifetime whips up a dystopian, pro-maternity spectacle in “The Lottery,” its new series set in a near-future in which there are virtually no babies left: “In 2019, only six children were born. They were the last ones.”
It’s a poor man’s “Children of Men,” the 2006 film by Alfonso Cuaron with a similar premise but endless creative superiority; this world-in-crisis is rendered with approximately the same level of nuance as “Recipe For a Perfect Christmas” (another Lifetime original).
After a raging pandemic of infertility, “The Lottery” sees an America in which men approach women at cocktail lounges, cooing, “You know, the bar bed is open,” and the government has ordered mandatory fertility testing. In what feels like a Hobby Lobby fever dream, the president goes before the nation to proclaim mournfully, “Our maternity wards here and around the world are empty.”
Kyle (Michael Graziadei), the father of one of the world’s only six children, is a handsome, hoodie-wearing single dad whose biggest transgression may be naming his son Elvis. But since he’s late picking up his kid at school one day, due to what appears to be mandated, hopefully procreative sex with a stranger, the government steps in, taking Elvis into custody.
Meanwhile, at a DC lab called Embryogenesis (in case you were confused about what they did there), Dr. Alison Lennon (Marley Shelton) and her colleague (David Alpay) have seen a breakthrough. They’ve successfully fertilized 100 human embryos, “the first in six years.”
In one of the pilot’s many ludicrous tangents, Lennon is also having casual sex with men on a sperm-donor list she’s stolen from her own lab; in this Lifetime-topia, everyone on Earth is now desperate to conceive. After picking up a bartender, she slips out the door post-coitus, telling him, “I happen to like your premature hair loss. It indicates a high level of testosterone.” Another casualty of this infertility-ravaged future: flirty small talk.
After Lennon is informed by a government heavy (Martin Donovan) that they’ll be taking over, the lithe blond doc goes rogue, seeking out a young woman (Amanda Brooks) who was one of the hundred donors, and stealing the woman’s egg from the lab.
Meanwhile, the president’s chief of staff (Athena Karkanis) sees the embryos as a p.r. gift, proposing the “What could possibly go wrong?” scenario of a national lottery to determine which hundred women get the honor of carrying one of the embryos that will save the world. Citizens gather around their televisions in wonder as the president announces the blessed event.
It’s a pretty lame ending to a fairly odious premise. But I’d still like to harbor a small fantasy for a future episode of “The Lottery”: An Oprah Winfrey cameo to announce the winners of this government contest. “And you get a pregnancy! And you get a pregnancy! And you get a pregnancy!”