The original shows that kicked Apple up a notch
After a slow start, the streamer is suddenly booming, with a packed slate of unmissable original series
“WE’VE ALL HAD enough of this amuse bouche!”, exclaims Jason Sudeikis as Ted Lasso at the climax of Apple TV+’S recent trailer. “Time to move on to the main course.” The Ted Lasso clip neatly sums up Apple’s message that, after a slow start 18 months ago (it launched with just three dramas and a couple of comedies), its streaming service is entering a bigger, bolder new phase. Now Apple boasts nearly 40 originals across all genres, from epic alternate-history space-race drama For All Mankind to intimate British adoption comedy Trying. Here’s our pick of the current and upcoming crop.
TED LASSO
The biggest Apple TV+ surprise critical hit so far is this giddily upbeat comedy, now back for a hugely anticipated second run. The first season saw the title character, played by Jason Sudeikis — a super-enthusiastic American who somehow finds himself coaching an English football team — suffer a heartbreaking setback for his struggling team, AFC Richmond. Expect Lasso’s relentless optimism and inspirational attitude to rise to the challenge for his second year in charge (plus, a rare appearance of his angry alter-ego, ‘Led Tasso’). Season 2 launches on 23 July
THE MORNING SHOW
Come for the A-list cast of Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell. Stay for the insanely addictive, frenetically paced dissection of American TV in-fighting and power games. Apple’s first bona fide hit, Season 2 will deal with the fallout of that bombshell finale that saw Aniston and Witherspoon’s characters expose a #Metoo reckoning at the network — now joined (as if that A-list cast wasn’t enough) by Julianna Margulies as a news anchor. Season 2 launches on 17 September
THE SHRINK NEXT DOOR
Take a riveting truecrime podcast, get Brit Georgia Pritchett (Veep, Succession) to adapt it, and Michael Showalter
(The Big Sick) to direct the dream duo of Paul Rudd and Will Ferrell, and you get the mouthwatering prospect of The Shrink Next Door. Rudd plays “psychiatrist to the stars” Dr Isaac Herschkopf, who ruthlessly manipulates his long-time patient Martin Markowitz (Ferrell) — to the point where he inserts himself into Marty’s everyday life, moving into his home and getting involved in the family business. Wandavision’s Kathryn Hahn plays Marty’s younger sister. Launches 12 November
FOUNDATION
Showrunner David S. Goyer, who wrote Batman Begins and created Davinci’s Demons for TV, thinks he needs 80 hour-long episodes to tell the story of legendary science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series of novels, which cover a thousand years of narrative. So it’s safe to say this looks like Apple TV+’S most ambitious scripted project. Chernobyl’s Jared Harris plays the lead role of mathematician Hari Seldon, who challenges the rulers of a future galactic empire, and from the initial trailer, it looks suitably massive and sprawling. Launches this autumn