Tag: Apple TV+

Disclaimer (2024)

Where to find it: Apple TV+
Length: Seven 50-minute episodes
Synopsis: An emotive drama about the grey area between truth and lies
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: themes, acting, direction
What I don’t like about it: grim, belabours its point

Review:
The latest Alfonso Cuarón project explores the impact of narratives and of true stories’ obfuscation of truth. An upper-middle-class Londoner’s precarious marriage is overturned by a vengeful storyteller armed with an old secret. Like Netflix’s Ripley, it has good acting and great directing (if you like shots of the sunset) but its tiresome pretension and meandering pointlessness make it hard to recommend.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): sex (too much), death by drowning, bereavement, protracted sexual assault in final episode

Ted Lasso (2020)

Where to find it: Apple TV+
Length: 34 one-hour episodes
Synopsis: American football coach with winning personality takes over English football club with losing record
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: gentle, occasionally gets a chuckle
What I don’t like about it: unfunny, unrealistic, costs too much, inconsistent acting

Review:
This transatlantic comedy-drama is easygoing but bland, full of painfully performative writing and paper-thin liberal fantasy characters. Being an Apple product, it burns through needless millions and far too much of it takes place on iPhone screens.

Content notes (may contain spoilers):

Mythic Quest (2020)

Where to find it: Apple TV+
Length: Thirty 30-minute episodes
Synopsis: Workplace comedy about a game developer
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: game industry satire, good characters and cast
What I don’t like about it: not very funny or great, can’t figure out its tone

Review:
Mythic Quest is a fictional MMORPG and this show follows the studio which creates it: self-obsessed creative lead Ian (pronounced like ‘iron’, Rob McElhenney), messy lead dev Poppy (Aussie newcomer Charlotte Nicdao), ineffectual producer David (David Hornsby), evil monetiser Brad (Danny Pudi), creative consultant C.W. (F. Murray Abraham), beleagured head of H.R. Carol (Naomi Ekperigin) and testers Dana (Imani Hakim) and Rachel (the multi-talented Ashly Burch), whose cute romance is a highlight.

The satirical workplace comedy is quite good, with some of the satire being so sharp that it’s a wonder they have Ubisoft’s help making this, but once per season they drop this format for a tangentially-related flashback drama episode. It’s a comfortable comedy if you’re in the market for one.

Content notes (may contain spoilers):

Slumberkins (2022)

Where to find it: Apple TV+
Length: Twenty 10-minute episodes
Synopsis: Toddler TV
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: puppets, focus on emotional learning
What I don’t like about it: weird mix of animation styles

Review:
The latest product of Apple’s partnership with the Jim Henson company finds a welcome return to their adorable puppet work in this adaptation of the popular childrens books. Each episode features at least one of the main cast (Bigfoot, Fox, Sloth, Unicorn and Yak) as they explore and play with their friends and families. As is inevitable at every stage of life, their social interactions bring them hurt feelings before they demonstrate a helpful ritual of taking a moment to examine their feelings, decide on a course of action and repeat a reassuring, rhyming mantra. The emotional lessons seem very valuable and generally applicable and the project is, overall, a worthy effort.

Unfortunately the show, combining green-screen muppets with flat animation and occasional full-body puppets for long shots, is disconcerting for adult eyes. Individually, the puppetry and the backgrounds are bright and pretty but they don’t so much combine as clash.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): one episode is about asking to use the toilet – they say poop a lot

Harriet the Spy (2022)

Where to find it: Apple TV+
Length: Ten 20-minute episodes
Synopsis: Cartoon about a privileged girl with no respect for boundaries
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: the art is kinda cute, music from Courtney Barnett and Aloe Blacc, among others
What I don’t like about it: pointless, both outdated and anachronistic, not even much fun, a deeply awkward race episode

Review:
Apple continue to spend too much money making shows no one wants to see. This one is an adaptation of a beloved children’s book, stripped of anything that made the book work. Harriet lives with her media professional parents in a penthouse in the Upper East Side of Manhattan in 1967. She constantly gets into trouble by spying on her neighbours and consistently avoids learning a lesson from it, as that would ruin the premise.

In fact, the simplistic moral messages which are the traditional stock-in-trade of children’s media are completely missing from the show, replaced by a vacuous and conspicuous consumerist individualism. Whenever Harriet feels sad, she buys something to cheer herself up! One might imagine that if she were born sixty years later like her target audience, she would probably treat herself to the latest Apple iPhone or highly-priced MP3s from Apple iTunes, that kind of thing.

Content notes (may contain spoilers):

Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry (2021)

Where to find it: Apple TV+
Length: 2 hours and 20 minutes
Synopsis: The making of a Gen Z hero
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: the subject, the intimate access
What I don’t like about it: so long they put an intermission in it

Review:
Billie Eilish, walking personification of the state of California, may have escaped your attention if, like me, you’re too old to keep up with Gen Z culture and call all of it ‘TikTok’ but this portrait will make a fan of even the most hardened sceptic. A product of hippy homeschooling, Eilish lives her life with kindness and carefree abandon. She is honest and upfront about her emotions, even when they’re kinda selfish. It’s hard not to love her and the close affectionate bond she shares with her family, they make great company for at least the first hour and a half of this one. We see Billie and brother Finneas writing songs together in their childhood bedrooms, Finneas lovingly nurturing his sister’s talent and attempting to quiet her overactive inner critic. Billie is incredibly cool and adorably neurodivergent throughout, greeting her obsessive fans with genuine appreciation and stopping a performance to make sure a struggling audience member got help.

Pressures soon pile up for Billie and Finneas as they are lured in by the anglerfish of fame and sign a record deal with Interscope, having to deal with the worldwide arena tours, overproduced music festivals and endless press junkets that go along with that. On top of pushing through a rapidly expanding career at the age of 17, Billie is also dealing with regular teenage challenges such as depression, passing her driving test and having a scrub for a first boyfriend, along with a unique set of challenges coming from her hypermobility, Tourette’s and other neurological issues. It honestly becomes hard to watch because even though Billie is still largely enjoying herself, she’s under a lot of strain in doing so and dissociates on camera a lot. I remain hopeful that she finds a fulfilling career without destroying her mental and physical health to keep up with the demands of being a pop icon.

Content notes (may contain spoilers):

Loot (2022)

Where to find it: Apple TV+
Length: Ten 25-minute episodes
Synopsis: Bland sitcom inspired by Mackenzie Scott and Melinda Gates
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: Maya Rudolph and Ron Funches are always fun
What I don’t like about it: barely makes an impression

Review:
This ripped-from-the-headlines sitcom about a divorced billionaire giving away her money is full of unlikeable characters, weak jokes and sitcom clichés.

Content notes (may contain spoilers):

Slow Horses (2022)

Where to find it: Apple TV+
Length: Six 50-minute episodes
Synopsis: Slightly more lighthearted Spooks knockoff
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: occasionally funny or decent action
What I don’t like about it: pointless, not enjoyable

Review:
Gary Oldman plays washed-up, disgusting spymaster Jackson Lamb who runs a team of spies who have fucked up bad enough to not be trusted but not bad enough to get sacked. New to his team is third-generation spy River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) and together they get involved in a far-right terrorist plot that doesn’t ring true until they reveal the whole thing was drummed up by MI5. Olivia Cooke has the most interesting character in this and so she is duly killed offscreen in episode 2. Not terrible but not at all good.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): violence, racism

Black Bird (2022)

Where to find it: Apple TV+
Length: Six 1-hour episodes
Synopsis: An informant befriends a killer
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: psychological, well-made, darkly fascinating, not too long
What I don’t like about it: always sickening

Review:
This grim and gritty series follows the autobiography of James Keene, a mid-level drug dealer who took on a job gathering evidence on a serial killer for the FBI to avoid a 10-year prison sentence. The acting is good, the writing is psychological, if you like these kinds of things (nauseating dark bloody true crime) then you’ll like this.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): violence, sex, sexual abuse, vomit

The Big Conn (2022)

Where to find it: Apple TV+
Length: Four 1-hour episodes
Synopsis: Documentary series about a flamboyant lawyer who perpetrates a huge social security fraud
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: it is an interesting story with real-life heroes and villains
What I don’t like about it: stretched way beyond the natural length of the story, cheesy re-enactments

Review:
Horrendously bloated by interviews with self-important journalists and juvenile re-enactments, this would have been decent had it been a movie.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): suicide