75 Best Releases From Apple TV+ Network (Page 3)

Considering the number of statues, attention, and fans the series has collected over two seasons, it may feel odd to call Ted Lasso Season 3 a chance at a comeback. However, given the backlash that seemed to accumulate during the back half of the second season, it isn’t entirely off the mark. Viewers and critics (not this one, make of that what you will) expressed frustration with the show’s messier tone and longer episodes. Additionally, even as the show pierced it, people’s appetite for Ted’s (Jason Sudeikis) positivity had rapidly grown thin in some quarters. Continue Reading →

Haunted house stories have always been my favorite. There's something so thrilling and unsettling about a place that feels and reacts to the people that occupy it. As I got older, I learned that haunting could mean many things. It could mean memory. It could mean joy, despair, humor, or fear soaking into the brick and mortar or reflecting our experiences back at us. If you look at it that way, isn't every house haunted? Continue Reading →

Hello Tomorrow! is a lot like its lead character Jack Billings (Billy Crudup). It looks great, for one. For another, it keeps dancing in the hopes that you won’t catch on to exactly how hollow its charms are, even when the music stops. And, like Billings, you almost want Hello Tomorrow! to get away with it. Unfortunately, they’re both running confidence games that they can’t land. Continue Reading →

“Emotionally manipulative” is a criticism of television and film I’ve always struggled with evaluating. If it is doing its job, any show or movie should emotionally manipulate you, at least a bit. It’s why you can go into a dark cineplex feeling a bit in the grip of the blahs and emerge high on the story of Nic Cage and his best swine friend. So know, when I declare Dear Edward “emotionally manipulative as hell,” that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Continue Reading →

Grief hits us all differently. For therapist Jimmy Laird (Jason Segel, also one of three Shrinking creators), the death of his wife led him to a year-long bender. The audience encounters him on his last night of drinking, drugs, and sex workers whom he pays not for sex but just to hang out with him. His neighbor Liz’s (Christa Miller) repeated pleas to stop waking her and her husband Derek (Ted McGinley) in the middle of the night with his “parties” finally break through. Continue Reading →

The danger in revisiting anything surprising in its quality the first time around is the loss of that surprise. Once you know a book, movie, or TV series can tell compelling stories, crack great jokes, or create multi-dimensional characters, one can’t help but expect that from its follow-ups and sequels. When the shock is gone, can the work still deliver? If so, how? Continue Reading →

There’s nothing wrong with adaptations finding their own path. In fact, it should be encouraged. Slavish devotion to the source material leads to dramatically inert material. That said, there are far better ways to adapt existing works than this. Echo 3’s team, led by series creator Mark Boal, has missed the mark in interpreting Amir Gutfreund’s novel When Heroes Fly and the first television adaption from Omri Givon. Continue Reading →

One of the hardest things in television is creating the impression of change without breaking the show or making it feel like half-assed window dressing. That’s the problem facing Mythic Quest at the start of Season 3.  Continue Reading →

From Promising Young Women to Big Little Lies, we’re in a golden age of female revenge stories. Looking to add to the ranks is AppleTV+’s new series Bad Sisters. It follows the tight-knit group of sisters who slowly turn on their prick-ish brother-in-law after years of misogynistic torture. It’s a dash of thriller Big Little Lies with a sprinkle of the comedy of 9 to 5, all set in a coastal Irish town.    Continue Reading →

Welcome to Right on Cue, the podcast where we interview film, TV, and video game composers about the origins and nuances of their latest works. https://open.spotify.com/episode/4o5jRlzLYUWWtUrjCObEN9?si=63ce4a3efcae4a89 While Apple TV+ is home to some of the biggest shows on TV -- your Teds Lasso, your Severances -- some of its best, most beguiling shows and miniseries don't get talked about nearly as often. Among those hidden gems is The Essex Serpent, the six-part adaptation of the novel by Sarah Perry, starring Claire Danes and Tom Hiddleston. Set in turn-of-the-century England, The Essex Serpent follows Cora Seaborne (Danes), a recently widowed Londoner, who sees her newfound freedom as the perfect excuse to pursue her love of science. That pursuit takes her to the Essex countryside, where a small town has been besieged by what's been reported to be a massive serpent. Some, including the town pastor (played by Hiddleston), doubt its veracity, but the town itself is convinced, and Cora's arrival just puts more fuel on the fire. Continue Reading →

When Black Bird opens with its Mogwai-penned and performed score and its series of voyeuristic but vague imagery, one will likely have an idea what kind of show they’re in for. And they will probably be correct. Continue Reading →

We love a “complicated” guy in pop culture, don’t we? Whether he’s just a prickly jerk, like Dr. Gregory House, or a faithless cad like Don Draper, or an outright murderer like Walter White, we find ourselves rooting for these characters, and hoping they succeed despite exhibiting behavior that few people get away with in real life. That is, of course, the draw - they appeal to our id, that side of us that wishes we could get away with indiscriminately cheating on our spouses, or getting involved in a life of crime. Nevertheless, we don’t perceive female characters the same way, so it’s a bold move on creator Annie Weisman to put such a difficult character as Sheila Rubin front and center in her Apple TV series Physical. She’s back for a second season, moving closer to her goal of finding happiness and fulfillment as a professional exercise instructor, but not any happier or fulfilled anywhere else in her life. Continue Reading →

Shining Girls makes for a difficult review because so many details could be considered spoilers. Those familiar with the source material, the novel The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes, will know the bigger ones. However, show creator Silka Luisa structured the series so differently even those who know the material may still be surprised. This review will do its best to preserve those surprises, but, as spoilers are in the eyes of the beholder, be warned your definition and this writer’s may differ. Continue Reading →

Things aren’t looking good for us right now, am I right, ladies? States are passing a historic number of anti-abortion laws, and the needle has barely moved in reaching income equality with men, particularly for Black and Latinx women. The time may not be right for a whimsical take on what it’s like to be a woman in the 21st century, but Apple TV+’s anthology Roar has enough of an edge on it to make it entertaining without being condescending or out of touch. Though it suffers from the typical unevenness of an anthology series, even its weaker entries are still solid, and their blessedly short half-hour runtime makes it all go down smooth. Continue Reading →

The news that Apple TV+ would shell out top dollar for a limited series based on Min Jin Lee’s family epic, the 2017 novel Pachinko, was generally well-received by fans of the book. With book to small screen adaptations like Station Eleven and My Brilliant Friend growing both increasingly common, and popular, it seemed like a natural fit for the sprawling story of a Korean family displaced by the Japanese occupation of their homeland during the 20th century. Continue Reading →

Do you hate your work life infringing on your home life? Can you not stand having to deal with outside issues while at your desk? The Severance program just might be for you. Continue Reading →

Reunions can be murder. You’ve got to fool yourself into thinking you look as good or better than you did at 18. Then you have to draw to make that delusion reality. Clothes. A new haircut. Makeup. Perhaps a fun new accessory you can pretend has always been your thing. Then you get there. You see exes, people you hated who have the nerve to look great and be successful, and former classmates who remind you that you were kind of terrible as a teenager, too. Continue Reading →

It’s baffling to me that Apple TV+ is still making kids-centered programming. In the streamer’s two years of existence, none of their family-friendly shows, whether they be Helpsters or Doug Unplugged, have left any kind of footprint. You’d think they’d realize Disney+ and Netflix have got this market cornered and would instead pursue programming the bigger streamers aren’t making by the truckload. Instead, Apple TV+ keeps on raging, raging against the dying interest in their kid’s programming, with shows like the new animated take on Harriet the Spy.  Continue Reading →

If I were to tell you that Will Ferrell and Paul Rudd were starring in a comedic miniseries about a hapless, neurotic man whose entire life is taken over by his overbearing psychiatrist, you’d be forgiven for assuming that (a) Ferrell plays the psychiatrist and Rudd his patient, and (b) it’d be a pretty funny movie. In fact, the opposite is true: Rudd, in a rare villainous role, is the doctor, and the series, Apple TV+’s The Shrink Next Door, isn’t particularly funny. Oh, there are some amusing moments, but they’re more likely to elicit laughs of the uncomfortable kind, as the viewer is torn between sympathizing with its protagonist and wanting desperately to shake some sense into him Continue Reading →