★★☆☆☆
Make or Break, Apple TV+’s surfing competition series, returns for its second season this week, throwing us right back into the personal lives and challenges facing the greatest wave riders in the world as they prepare for a world championship.
Who will be crowned the best? If that question excites you, you’ll have a fine time with this by-the-numbers surfing docuseries.
★★★★☆
Apple TV+’s Servant takes a trip to a backyard zoo this week. The show about the world’s scariest nanny and her burgeoning mystical powers finds the Turner family in the middle of a circus of violence, vomit and vengeance.
The cult members haven’t run out of ideas about ways to get Leanne back, even if Dorothy has. Plus, Sean and Julian have a brutal heart-to-heart. And Bev has a bone to pick with Leanne.
The episode, entitled “Zoo,” is another marvelously unhinged half-hour of television from the best crew in the biz.
★★★★☆
Trini is still lost, and Markus and Poppy are still sweating every minute she’s gone this week on Apple TV+ true crime podcast drama Truth Be Told. Trini’s location is right within everyone’s fingertips, but they still can’t be sure where she is.
Finney’s every move is now being watched, but he may have already pocketed the Oakland Police Department. Aames, Poppy, Markus, Eva and Leander are all mobilized, but without a solid clue that won’t do any good. Can they rescue Trini before she suffers the same fate as Eva?
The episode, entitled “Freedom Is Never Given; It Is Won,” is another rough but gripping outing.
★★☆☆☆
Apple TV+’s Shrinking, in which Jason Segel plays a therapist on the edge, continues to circle the drain this week. When James learns that his daughter Alice has feelings for a guy, it scares him — and he doesn’t know where to turn.
Gaby and Brian must meet in the middle on an issue of matrimony. Paul and Sean both need to overcome something pretty big in order to start healing. And at the center of everything is a wounded Alice, pulling everyone’s strings.
★★★★☆
New Apple TV+ show Hello Tomorrow! blasts back to the future with a pumped-up Space Age pitchman fighting hard to keep his head above water. Actor Billy Crudup, who dazzled us on The Morning Show, puts in another magnificent turn as the Don Draper-style head of a sales team selling timeshares on the moon in a retro-futurist suburban community.
The new series, the first three episodes of which premiere today, has an awful lot on its mind — and only 30-minute episodes in which to say it all. While the delivery feels a little rushed, I’m calling it: Hello Tomorrow! is a special show.
★★★☆☆
Apple TV+ neo-noir thriller Sharper centers on a circle of power players and would-be moguls scattered across New York City. The film adopts a La Ronde structure in tracing the malice and greed that motivates the con artists. And its sleek, Instagram-inspired look, as well as its ’80s-style score, make the ill-gotten gains shine all the brighter.
Premiering today, Sharper is a perfectly fine movie. But unfortunately, it’s designed to be forgotten the day after it’s been seen.
Cellular carrier T-Mobile said Tuesday it’s offering MLS Season Pass for free to every customer this soccer season. The pass is available by subscription via the Apple TV app on millions of devices, with many matches available on Apple TV+.
So if you’re a T-Mobile or Metro by T-Mobile customer, MLS Season Pass — the only way to watch all of the league’s live soccer matches this season — comes free when you sign up for it. See details below.
The Tetris movie isn’t about falling blocks. Instead, the Apple TV+ film is a thriller about how the hugely popular game was brought out of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
The trailer clearly shows the struggle an entrepreneur goes through to convince a deeply suspicious communist regime to allow Tetris out of the country.
Apple TV+’s star-studded limited series Extrapolations is set in a near future where the chaotic effects of climate change have become embedded into everyone’s everyday lives.
The trailer for the series gives a dark look at what the end of the century could look like.
Apple TV+ subscribers can enjoy a collection of half a dozen classic romantic comedies added to the streaming service just in time for Valentine’s Day.
The list includes Pretty Woman, Never Been Kissed and more.
Apple TV+ finally revealed the premiere date for Ted Lasso season three. The hugely popular comedy will return on March 15.
There’s also a teaser trailer for the new season, along with hints of what to expect.
The new comedy Shrinking has become a standout success for Apple TV+, according to two audience-tracking companies. The last new shows on the streaming service to attract so much attention were Black Bird and Severance. Not that the three series have much in common, besides being able to pull in large numbers of viewers.
Shrinking, which stars Jason Segel and Harrison Ford, is about a therapist who throws out the rulebook and tells his clients what he really thinks they should do.
★★★★☆
Sean and Dorothy throw a party this week on Servant, the Apple TV+ show about a nanny who is more than she seems and the family harboring her. Leanne is starting to notice that her adopted family isn’t being quite as familial and loving as she’d like. And she decides something must be done about it.
As the neighborhood gathers in the Turner household, Leanne plots her own pincer maneuver in a brilliantly directed installment of the best series on Apple TV+.
★★★★☆
We’ve got a fugitive on our hands on this week’s Truth Be Told, the Apple TV+ series about a true crime podcaster and her little corner of Oakland, California.
Trini is missing and Poppy’s solutions all involve a lot of risk. Markus and Zarina are sweating and at each other’s throats while searching for their daughter. Eva learns something about her lover and runs into an old acquaintance. And Leander tries hard to stay on Poppy’s good side.
The episode, entitled “Never Take Your Eyes Off Her,” serves up another gripping 45 minutes of television from this crew.
★☆☆☆☆
New Apple TV+ series Dear Edward takes our hero to school this week. The show — about a boy who survives a plane crash and the relatives of people who weren’t so lucky — doubles down on all of its intricate absurdities in the episode, entitled “Chrysalis.”
Dee Dee learns more about her dead husband than she ever wanted to know. Edward receives fan mail. Audrey and Kojo keep getting closer. And multiple funerals loom. It’s another impressively confused episode of the grief-based drama.
★☆☆☆☆
Shrinking, the hit Apple TV+ show about a therapist unraveling, sees James starting to suffer the consequences of his crazy new practices this week.
Paul is still mad at him for his radical ideas and the way they’re putting James’ daughter Alice in danger. But Paul’s own daughter Meg is in town, so he’s got bigger fish to fry. Meanwhile, Liz finds herself in the crosshairs of James’ ire — and only Gabrielle’s intervention saves them from hurting each other.
It’s another episode of a surprisingly popular show, in which no one’s problems are ever as big a deal as they seem.
If there’s one thing you can tell from the trailer Apple TV+ dropped Tuesday for its first French- and English-language series — the thriller Liaison — it’s that a shadowy Frenchman (Vincent Cassel) and an English operative (Eva Green) have a thing for each other.
Almost every time you see the international stars onscreen, both of whom are actually French, they’re staring into each other’s eyes. Meanwhile, London endures assault after assault, and it’s only getting worse.
Shrinking is finding a growing audience. The Apple TV+ comedy drew enough viewers during its debut week to become one of the top 10 most popular shows on all streaming platforms.
The ongoing series starring Jason Segel and Harrison Ford is about a therapist who throws out the rule book and tells his clients what he really thinks they should do.
★★★★☆
Halloween comes early this week on Servant, the Apple TV+ saga of a family increasingly held prisoner by the mystic nanny who once threatened to save them from themselves.
On the prowl for zealots, Leanne discovers that the violence inside her can be used for more than necessary evil. Julian and Sean are starting to lose the illusion that they have any kind of control over her, and are beginning to agree with Dorothy that it’s time for the nanny to go. It’s another excellently creepy outing for the Turner family.
★★★★☆
Secrets come out left and right on this week’s episode of Truth Be Told, Apple TV+’s drama about a true crime podcaster and her community.
Leander and Poppy have to hash out some family history, and Markus and Zarina have to hash out some very present things or risk losing their future together. Plus, Eva must be honest about who she is and what she wants.
Even though none of them yet know it, the clock is ticking. The episode, entitled “Here She Shall See No Enemy,” stands as a superlative edition of the Oakland-set drama.
Consumer electronics maker LG added Apple TV, Apple Music, AirPlay and HomeKit to its webOS Hub Tuesday, making Apple’s core services available to smart TVs from 200 brands that use the custom software.
The update starts rolling out Friday in more than 100 countries and regions. It could provide quite a boost to Apple globally as new users try the features.
★★★★☆
Marvelous Apple TV+ children’s show Pinecone & Pony returns for an energetic second season this week. The animated show, based on the popular book by writer and cartoonist Kate Beaton, centers on a hero-in-training in a world based on Viking lore and Lord of the Rings-style fantasy.
The series continues to combine cute animation and vocal performances with good-natured social lessons. It’s a winning and whimsical escape for kids and adults should also have a very nice time indeed.
★★☆☆☆
Shrinking, the new Apple TV+ comedy starring Jason Segel as therapist James Laird, starts dealing with the consequences of its lead character’s new ideas about mental health this week. In fact, it looks like maybe James needs a little time on the couch himself.
With one patient supposedly living in Canada with her sister to avoid an abusive husband, one revising his dating game, and one living in James’ poolhouse, his track record doesn’t exactly look successful. Plus, Gabrielle needs a little help, James and Alice find a new outlet for their sadness, and Paul needs his eyes checked.
Unfortunately, this week’s episode of Shrinking proves every bit as frustrating as the first two.
★☆☆☆☆
New Apple TV+ series Dear Edward is a sprawling ensemble piece about the aftermath of a plane crash. This baffling bit of overwrought drama cannot decide for longer than a few scenes what it’s actually about — or why it needs a season (or more) of TV to tell stories we’ve already heard in the most overwrought terms possible.
The series, which premieres today, misfires on just about every front. This show about grief seems to itself be in the throes of a panic attack.
Major League Soccer fans in more than 100 countries can now sign up for the MLS Season Pass subscription service via the Apple TV app and Apple TV+, Cupertino said Wednesday.
This comes ahead of the 2023 season’s launch on February 25. The new service will air all MLS and Leagues Cup matches, plus hundreds of MLS NEXT Pro and MLS NEXT games, Apple said.