Several TV critics have bashed “The Morning Show,” one of the first originals from Apple TV+, but I’ve enjoyed what I’ve seen.
It’s about a network morning TV broadcast thrown into turmoil by the sudden firing of its male longtime co-anchor over sexual harassment accusations (think Matt Lauer). The writing is pretty crisp, with characters going off on rants and walk-and-talks reminiscent of Aaron Sorkin’s work (“The Newsroom” in particular).
Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon (who once played sisters on “Friends”) lead a cast that includes Billy Crudup, Mark Duplass, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Nestor Carbonell. Unfortunately, there’s not much for Steve Carrell to do as the man who lost his lofty studio perch (and family) for taking advantage of underlings.
Hopefully, going forward, the series will lean more on satirizing the TV business and less on melodrama. I also think that after Netflix and Amazon have gotten us used to bingeing entire seasons on our own schedules, it’s shortsighted for Apple to release only the first three episodes, with the rest to come once a week.
By the way, we’re not paying $4.99/month to watch Apple TV+. Martha recently bought an iPhone 11 Pro, so we get the service free for the first year. However, I can’t get it to stream to our TVs through Amazon’s Firestick or Google’s Chromecast, leaving me no option but to watch it on my laptop. That’s gotta change.