EYES ON THE PRIZE
With the sheer number of shows out there, how can we choose what to watch on TV?
The day after the last candle flames had flickered out behind a million carved pumpkin eyes, people across the globe awoke to find the world had subtly changed. The magical power of the richest company on the globe, the technological marvel that is Apple, had brought to us, the natives of this planet, the gift of story, of images moving before our very eyes, of fantasy and
... Wait. What? Yeah, OK, they launched a new TV streaming service, Apple+. It’s got Jennifer Aniston on it.
Oh great. Just what we needed. More television. More choices. The small number of individuals who can reel off all the “platforms” now available, let alone the infinite galaxy of channels, continues to shrink with each new one that is announced. Let me see, there’s Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, CraveTV, Hulu, Disney+, iPlayer, Apple TV+ ... If you say them loud enough, you’ll always sound precocious.
Of course, most of these are not just platforms — they make “originals,” as well. Click play on any of the new shows on
Apple TV+, and the first thing to emerge from the void will be “An Apple Original.” In other words, they made it themselves. A bit like a pub selling its own beer.
Apple’s first artisanal array includes the aforementioned Aniston vehicle, The Morning Show, the tale of a news anchor whose presenting partner (Steve Carell) has been fired after sexual harassment claims, leaving her vulnerable to a full facelift of the show along ageist lines. It’s so calculatedly zeitgeisty, it could have been baked en papillote in a #MeToo manifesto. But the starry cast, which also includes Reese Witherspoon, certainly looks expensive, as do other launch offerings, such as the teen-inflected drama Dickinson. Taken together, they hint that Apple, with its mind-bogglingly deep pockets, has now fully entered what Courteney Monroe, the president of National Geographic Global Television Networks, described to me earlier this year as the “economic arms race” in TV. The chequebook-led battle that’s going on globally for talent, for ideas, she said, is “staggering.”
But what about us, the people who have to watch all this stuff? I don’t remember when I gave up keeping up with all the things people told me were really good, but it was quite a long time ago. One friend has told me for several seasons now that Netflix’s BoJack Horseman is one of the greatest things ever made.
It probably is. I just don’t have time to find out.
It’s worse than that. Have you ever enjoyed one of those special nights in when you and a significant other decide “let’s watch something” together? It begins with a brief survey of just-released things you’ve vaguely heard about — but you discover that you’re not quite in the mood. You move on to a search of TV guides and “platforms” to see if anything is yelling “watch me!” The choices pile up, but nothing really looks that tempting.
You study The Best Films and TV Shows of 2019 So Far. There’s an endlessly unrolling biblical scroll of them, but nothing you really fancy. You end up, two hours later, watching an old episode of Grey’s Anatomy. If you’re from a younger generation, you might put Friends on instead; it’s the second most streamed show on Netflix after all. And if you don’t think there’s a correlation between that fact and the first paragraph of this piece, you’re not paying attention.
Apple TV+ arrives at a point when the proliferation of choices makes it ever harder to decide what to watch, and adding more shows to choose from, however great, for $6 a month isn’t going to make that any easier. Mind you, that thing they’ve got coming in December looks good, the one with Octavia Spencer and Aaron Paul — Truth Be Told. Oh, and did I mention, that HBO’s Succession is one of the greatest things ever made?
London Daily Telegraph