Apple TV+ streams sci-fi fable ‘Finch’

Straddling the lines between poignant and peculiar, adult dystopia and a fable fit for children, “Finch” debuts on Apple TV+. Tom Hanks stars in the title role of this long-delayed 2021 epic as a genius scientist and one of the few survivors of a solar storm that ripped up the Earth’s atmosphere, exposing all living things to gruesome radiation.

He’s first seen scouring the highways of St. Louis, wearing a kind of spacesuit and driving a monster truck. He retreats to a vast compound, where he lives with his dog and a small, petlike android. As the story begins, he’s working on a more sentient robot that walks upright like a biped. This creature’s education and data upload are interrupted by the arrival of a deadly superstorm that sends Finch and his “family” on a road trip west in a high-tech Winnebago. It’s not giving away too much to reveal that Finch is feeling his health fail and that he’s created his new assistant to take care of his dog after he’s gone.

The film draws on any number of references, from fables and literature to Tom Hanks’ own movie catalog. Finch is seen with a copy of “The Little Prince” in his possession. The need for Hanks to act alone in a desolate world will evoke obvious comparisons to “Cast Away,” also produced by Robert Zemeckis. The naive simplicity and innate goodness of the android, who eventually takes the name Jeff, may remind some of “Forrest Gump.” And while he mans a recreational vehicle, Hanks’ Finch is very much the grizzled, bearded captain, a fixture of many of his movies of the past.

The arrival of Jeff also allows Hanks’ Finch to play the exasperated dad. Scenes of him teaching his creation to walk, drive the RV, play with the dog and understand the notion of trust would seem much more cloying and corny in another actor’s hands. The film almost seems to be laughing at its own contrivance when a frustrated Finch yells at his “son,” “I know you were just born yesterday, but you’ve got to grow up!”

This is certainly not Hanks’ last movie, but it has a valedictory feeling, at least for the “everyboomer” characters that he has been playing. I don’t know what’s a more frightening prospect — a coming apocalypse, or the fact that Don McLean’s “American Pie” seems to survive it.

› Also on Apple TV+, Jack McBrayar (“30 Rock”) hosts “Hello, Jack! The Kindness Show,” a gentle children’s show with lessons, hugs, songs and a vague sense of self-parody.

› Returning series include season three of “Dickinson” (Apple TV+); season five of “Big Mouth” (Netflix); “Narcos: Mexico” season three (Netflix); season two of “Animaniacs” (Hulu).

› “The Center Seat: 55 Years of ‘Star Trek’” (10 p.m., History), recalls the visionary Gene Rodenberry space epic and the role that Desilu executive Lucille Ball played in its creation.