Apple finally jumps fully into the streaming pool
For years, I’ve gone to the Apple TV app on my iPhone to catch an occasional Phillies game or program that was easiest accessed through that channel.
While it will continue to stream programs from a wide variety of sources, the corporate giant is adding fresh, homegrown product to its offerings, becoming not only a peer to streamers such as Netflix and Hulu but a rival.
Enter Apple TV Plus (or Apple TV+).
It was always a matter of time before Apple would seek its niche in the lucrative, brand-expanding, and brand-enhancing field of entertainment production. If Apple TV exists, the logic goes, why shouldn’t there be original Apple TV shows, such as are seen from other companies, such as Amazon, and even Microsoft, in the form of MSNBC? (It’s where the MS part of the network’s name comes from.) Disney, long an important name in media, and all entertainment, is soon to enlarge and introduce a streaming mode adding to its ABC and cable holdings. Comcast is the one company that begins early as a carrier via cable and snowballs into developing local stations, creating product, and owning a standard network, NBC.
Starting Nov. 1, it’s Apple’s turn. Apple TV Plus will begin with nine original programs — four streamed series, two of which boast the marquee power of names like Reese Witherspoon, Steve Carell, Jennifer Aniston, Jane Krakowski, Jason Momoa, and Alfre Woodard, three children’s programs, a cameo skein with Oprah Winfrey, and a documentary about elephants.
The series are varied, one taking place in at a national network broadcast studio, one taking cues from “Game of Thrones” and “Lost” while providing its own plot spin, one reversing history with Soviets landing on the moon before Americans do, and the fourth about American poet Emily Dickinson. The children’s program employs monster-like characters to impart life lessons (Sound familiar?)
Getting the most attention is “The Morning Show,” which goes behind the scenes to depict the politics, ego, and sometimes ethics, that go into putting a program such as NBC’s “Today” or ABC’s “Good Morning America” on the air.
Aniston plays the anchor of a successful wake-up show disrupted by the firing of her co-host, played by Carell, after — what else? — a sex scandal while she endures a power struggle with one of with a newbie on the set (Witherspoon). Billy Crudup, Mark Duplass, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, all playing producers, are also part of the cast
Apple TV+ made quite an investment in “The Morning Show.” It is set for 20 episodes over two seasons. Carell will appear only in Season 1.
It’s the costumes in “See,” a hierarchical survival-adventure series set the in the future, that makes me think of “Game of Thrones.”
Picture if Apple TV+ could have an equivalent hit right out of the gate.
“See” posits a world in which a virus from decades previous wiped out most of humankind and left those who survived as blind. Vision becomes mythic, but evolution reboots when Jason
Momoa’s character sires two sighted twins. This advancement captures the attention of — what else? — a Herod-like evil queen (Sylvia Hoeks) who wants to see these wondrous children for herself. Momoa leads a tribe that must protect itself from the queen and other forces. Battles for supremacy, appeasers who would surrender the babies to the queen for the sake of peace, and other familiar plot lines abound with the twist that everyone in the story must compensate for lack of sight.
As with “The Morning Show,” Apple TV invested heavily in “See.” It’s a sign of the overall company’s deep pockets that it can to the extent it has for its rollout.
I have to say the trailer for “See” did not reveal any great acting on the horizon, and I’ve always had the question about enlisting Jason Momoa, only useful for visuals, when no one can see him. (The answer is the audience can.) But, Alfre Woodard is incapable of a bad performance, and “See” had some pedigree in the idea for it comes from Steven Knight from “Peaky Blinders,” and it is directed by Francis Lawrence, who helmed “The Hunger Games.”
“For All Mankind” turns history on its ear by putting America’s NASA space program in overdrive when it has to respond to the Soviet Union landing the first man on the moon. The call comes for the United States to plant its flag, and soon. Not only is history changed, it’s accelerated. The President in “For All Mankind,” who would be Richard Nixon if fact prevailed, wants the first American astronaut to touch down to be a woman. “For All Mankind” goes into the women training for the assignment, one of whom is married to the astronaut who was scheduled to make the voyage before the Russians stole the achievement. The producer is Ronald D. Moore whose previous shows were “Battlestar Gallactica” and “Outlander.”
Unfairly, when I think of Hailee Steinfeld, the image that comes is of her in “True Grit,” which was released in 2010, since which Steinfeld has had time to grow to womanhood and accrue some adult credits.
For Apple TV+, she stars as Emily Dickinson in an ongoing series, “Dickinson,” that is billed as a comedy and, while set in Dickinson’s mid-19th century, is said to have contemporary sensibilities. The trailer plays on Dickinson’s famous line about death “stopping for me” by having Death appear in a carriage drawn by phantom horses. Lo and behold, Death is played by Wiz Khalifa. In another scene, Emily does some 90’s-style dancing.
It looks all to kitschy to me, but Friday will tell the whole story. Krakowski plays Emily’s mother, who is against her forays into writing and modern feminine thought. John Mulaney appears in the trailer announcing he will be the great poet. He’s cast as Henry David Thoreau.
The documentary. “The Elephant Queen,” depicts the filial family structure of the beasts as a long-occupied ancestral habitat is destroyed, and a herd, led by a female, seeks a new home.
One children’s series, “Helpsters,” is done in associated with “Sesame Street’s” Children’s Television Workshop and features a monster named Cory and his fellow monsters who solve problems that can range from planning a party to climbing a mountain or perfecting a magic trick. In Muppet style, the characters are colorful and have names such as Heart, Mr. Primm, and Scatter. The point the show makes is everything begins with a plan.
Space and a beloved children’s character, this time from the mind of Charles Schulz, combine for a movie, “Snoopy in Space,” that Apple TV+ also launches Nov. 1.
Oprah, perhaps TV history’s most important person for non-scripted programs, brings “Oprah’s Book Club” to Apple in every-othermonth installments. First up is Ta-Nehisi Coates to talk about his current novel, “The Water Dancer.”
The other children’s series takes a plot and title from a different century. “Ghost Writer” is about fictional characters who come to life in a book store, and the children who have to
solve the mystery about how the literary figures became animated and how to contain them.
While Friday’s most important news is the launch of Apple TV+, it’s a busy day for debuts and season premieres in general.
In addition to the Apple fare, Netflix airs the Broadway production of “American Son,” in which different characters give a different version of a mother’s search for her lost child in Florida. As it did in New York, “American Son” stars “Scandals’s” Kerry Washington and Broadway star Steven Pasquale. “Newsies” favorite Jeremy Jordan appears, while Eugene Lee completes the cast.
Also on Netflix are the season openers for “Atypical” and “Queer Eye,” this year set in Japan.
Meanwhile Prime Video begins a new season of “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan.”
Comcast’s mistake with TCM
A couple of thing to ponder from recent TV-related events.
Comcast is entitled to create and price packages, but it seemed curious that one of its latest ideas was to take Turner Classic Movies from its basic bundle and make it a premium station that is tied to a sports package.
Yes, I can understand Comcast wanting to boost prospective audience by giving movie buffs more access to its sports programming, but is this access that is wanted?
I mildly appalled Dom Giordano last Friday by admitting that I was at the theater in Brooklyn on the date the Eagles won the Super Bowl and could not answer when someone in the lobby asked me when the game was going to start.
My point was that though I may care a little about the Eagles, my mind was on the attraction about to appear on the theater stage. Sports is secondary in my life to entertainment. My Super Bowls come on Oscar, Tony, and Emmy night.
It is conceivable that many combine an enthusiasm for old movies and sports, but to me, it doesn’t seem like a great intersection. One most nights, I’d much rather see Cary Grant or Ginger Rogers than Aaron Rodgers. There’s no right or wrong about it. It’s just that fans of vintage movies may never decide to partake of a professional league game. Perhaps if Comcast had linked TCM to another movie channel, or even HBO or Showtime, their new pricing would make sense. As it stands, it seems the cable provider is mixing a tiger with a monkey and expecting a get a zebra. The combination doesn’t make sense. It puts many in a position of having to choose whether to forgo TCM so they’re not paying for something they don’t want and will never watch regarding sports, or to bite the bullet and take the unwanted extra just to keep Cary and Ginger on their home screens.
The other question is how offended a woman sports reporter can actually be by hearing an expletive, one I’d bet she’d uttered herself on occasion, by an executive pumped up by a major victory as he made his point. Again, a molehill elevates to a mountain, the mundane becomes absurd, popular neo-Puritanism takes over, and adult response gets thrown out windows or, in this case clubhouse doors.
One great journalism story
One story line I enjoyed from the touring production of “Come From Away” at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music is about a reporter whose first day of work is September 11, 2001, and she has to report on 7,000 stranded travelers landing in her town of 9,000. It’s great to see how the rookie learns the power of television and is a seasoned pro when the same travelers come to the same town 10 years later for a reunion.