In this installment of 3 Reasons to Watch, we’ll tell you why we’re buzzing about High Desert, the new Apple TV+ comedy starring livewire Patricia Arquette as daffy private eye Peggy Newman.
The show, created by Miss Congeniality writer Katie Ford and Grace and Frankie alums Nancy Fichman and Jennifer Hoppe, is a bawdy neo-noir set in a world of lowlifes and fake cowboys.
Here’s why you need to give High Desert the old college try.
★★★★★
Season two of Prehistoric Planet will fill the heart of any dinosaur-obsessed child with joy. And adults should watch, too — especially anyone who still thinks dinos are slow-moving, stupid creatures that are just waiting around to go extinct.
These new episodes, which Apple TV+ doled out this week, combine cutting-edge CGI with the latest in paleontology. The result is a series that’s stunningly beautiful, exciting to watch and as scientifically accurate as possible.
In this installment of 3 Reasons to Watch, we look at Bad Sisters, the Irish black comedy that racked up awards after its spectacular first season.
The acidic series follows the five Garvey sisters, who are complicit in a crime … but not in the way it initially appears. Here’s why you need to stream Bad Sisters yesterday.
Silo, Ted Lasso and Ghosted all showed up in this week’s lists of the most-watched streaming movies and TV shows. They offer further proof that Apple TV+ can successfully compete against Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+.
In fact, Silo currently ranks as the most popular series on any streaming service.
If you love Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the rest of the Peanuts gang, the kids-and-family slate Apple TV+ plans for this summer should be right up your alley (or in your dog house).
Apple TV+ said Friday you can expect two new Peanuts specials, the new series Camp Snoopy and, outside of Linus and Lucy’s world, new seasons of Duck & Goose, Eva the Owlet and the award-winning Lovely Little Farm.
The first trailer for Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon opens with bare-chested members of the Osage Nation dancing exuberantly in slow motion around an oilfield gusher. And then things get dark … really dark, really fast.
It’s a riveting first look at the movie, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, which comes to Apple TV+ this October.
Swagger, the Apple TV+ series that isn’t exactly the life of basketball superstar Kevin Durant, returns for season 2 in June. The young players are getting famous and the future look bright, but a scandal might ruin all their hopes.
A trailer for the upcoming season, released Monday, shows some of what to expect in the episodes that premiere in June.
★★★☆☆
New Apple TV+ documentary Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie tells the story of the charismatic actor’s life, his complicated relationship with stardom, and the degenerative disease that hit him at an early age.
Directed by Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth, He Named Me Malala), it’s a fleet, funny, tragic and humane portrait of a man desperate to get everything out of his head while he still can.
Dystopian sci-fi thriller Silo debuted on Apple TV+ Friday, May 5, and the story of the last 10,000 people on earth living in a buried silo is proving to be deeply popular among viewers and critics alike. They’re digging it.
A number of ratings services and critical sources show it at or near the top of lists ranking streaming services’ shows.
The second season of Apple TV+’s epic space opera Foundation premieres July 14, the streaming service said Thursday.
A newly released teaser trailer gives a first look at what’s coming to the series based on Isaac Asimov’s classic novels.
Apple TV+ dropped a trailer Wednesday for The Crowded Room. The new 10-episode psychological thriller centers on a shooting in New York City in 1979. It stars Tom Holland as a suspect and Amanda Seyfried as an interrogator. She gets in his head and seems to find a lot going on there.
The trailer doesn’t come right out and say — spoiler alert! — Holland’s character suffers from dissociative identity disorder — multiple personalities — but you can’t help but consider the possibility. The show premieres June 9 on the streaming service.
The Writers Guild of America is on strike, causing problems both immediate and long-term for TV and movie production. And Apple TV+ certainly is not immune.
Production on two Apple series already stopped because of picketing, including the bugle popular Severance. And that raises questions about other series and movies.
Apple TV+ notched four wins Sunday at the 20th Annual Irish Film and Television Awards for the hit dark dramedy series Bad Sisters.
The show won Best Drama Series, Best Lead Actress for Sharon Horgan, Best Supporting Actress for Anne-Marie Duff and Best Director for Dearbhla Walsh.
Cult of Mac is pleased to debut a new feature, 3 Reasons to Watch, in which we highlight an Apple TV+ show or movie worthy of consideration. This week we’re looking at sommelier potboiler Drops of God, based on the manga by Yuko and Shin Kibayashi.
The show is currently airing its first season. Here’s why Drops of God is worth your time.
Apple TV+ revealed the launch date for Hijack, a seven-part thriller starring Idris Elba. When it debuts June 28, the series will follow a hijacked plane in “real time,” with Elba playing a passenger trying to negotiate with terrorists.
The first images from the show were also released on Friday.
Apple Music Live returns for its second season May 10 with a concert by Ed Sheeran at the Eventim Apollo in London. He’ll perform the whole of his new album “-” (aka “subtract,” because it’s a minus sign), Apple Music said Friday.
For the show, Sheeran will play with a 12-piece band that includes The National’s Aaron Dessner, who also produced Sheeran’s album. And in a new twist, you can watch Sheeran’s show and others to follow during the season on Apple TV+.
Apple TV+ dropped the official season 2 trailer for the award-winning natural history series Prehistoric Planet Tuesday. It explores new dinosaur discoveries and diverse habitats from 66 million years ago.
And that’s not all. The streaming service said a new companion podcast looking at the science and filmmaking behind the series launches May 8, ahead of the May 22 season 2 debut.
Production on the second season of Severance, the Apple TV+ thriller about a profoundly creepy workplace, has seen delays because the series’ two showrunners hate each other, according to a recent report.
Scripts were scrapped amid the two not speaking to each other as director Ben Stiller searched for help. And it seems he finally found it. Stiller also downplayed on-set drama in a tweet.
Ghosted had the most successful launch of any Apple TV+ film since the debut of the streaming service. Enough viewers tuned in to the action flick starring Chris Evans and Ana de Armas to push it near the top of the charts.
And the third — possibly final — season of the comedy Ted Lasso continues to draw plenty of eyes.
★★★★★
New Apple TV+ children’s show Frog and Toad, based on the classic book series by Arnold Lobel about two amphibious friends, is smartly and simply animated in the style of the Caldecott Award-winning author.
Frog and Toad is a real gem — a welcome inclusion in the Apple TV+ lineup, and an honorable adaptation of a classic.
Ghosted is the first straight-out action movie to premiere on Apple TV+. The film, which stars Chris Evans and Ana de Armas, has been savaged by critics, but it really does not deserve all the insults.
True, it’s far from perfect. However, Ghosted delivers some good fight scenes and a laugh or two. And that’s probably all you want from a made-for-streaming action flick.
Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen play a pair of friends having dual midlife crises in Platonic, a comedy series coming to Apple TV+ in May.
The Platonic trailer, released Wednesday, shows just how funny but destructive their friendship can be.
☆☆☆☆☆
New Apple TV+ action movie Ghosted is probably the most fake movie you’ll see this year, if indeed you decide to punish yourself by watching it. Slackly paced, howlingly unfunny, acted in complete boredom and frustration, and deeply uninterested in the handful of genres it touches upon, it’s maddeningly devoid of anything resembling a spark of creativity or charisma.
The flick boast some big-name stars, including Chris Evans and Ana de Armas, but Apple kept this one away from critics until the day before release for a very good reason.
Apple TV+ dropped a teaser trailer Thursday for the upcoming drama series Lessons in Chemistry, starring Oscar-winner Brie Larson. She plays a frustrated young scientist in the early 1950s who gets fired from a lab, takes a job as host of a TV cooking show and “sets out to teach … a lot more than recipes,” according to the streaming service.
Based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Bonnie Garmus, the new series debuts this fall, Apple TV+ said.
Apple TV+ lit the fuse on upcoming mystery-thiller City on Fire, releasing its first trailer Tuesday. The eight-episode series takes its tale of murder, arson and family drama from the acclaimed novel of the same name by Garth Risk Hallberg.
City on Fire debuts with three episodes on Friday, May 12, on Apple TV+.