Apple TV+ - page 31

This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: What does Apple’s star-studded September 7 event invite mean? Some of the speculation is pretty “far out,” but Erfon thinks he has the answer.

Also on The CultCast:

• The M2 MacBook Air humiliates a pricier Dell laptop.
• Shazam still works like magic (and somehow Apple didn’t screw it up).
• Zombie cinema-subscription service MoviePass is coming back from the dead!
• Don’t miss Best Buy’s killer freebie: three months of Apple TV+, for new and returning subscribers.

Listen to this week’s episode of The CultCast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video live stream, embedded below.

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Apple TV+ is known perhaps first and foremost for its international hit Ted Lasso. But that heartwarming show about a bumbling soccer coach with a positivity streak a mile wide only scratches the surface of the streamer’s burgeoning comedy roster.

Comedy veterans and unlikely newcomers alike staked out spots in the ever-growing Apple TV+ lineup, offering laughs for the cost of emotional engagement with some deeply wounded and weird characters.

Ultimately, the best comedies on Apple TV+ are the ones that hurt a little.

Apple TV+ dark comedy Bad Sisters regroups and strikes back harder this week. The Irish series about five sisters and their common enemies keeps winning — by losing.

After the untimely death of Grace’s no-good husband John Paul, Becka won’t let potential new boyfriend Thomas take “no” for an answer. And Thomas’ brother, Matthew, does the same in opening an insurance investigation into the death of Becka’s brother-in-law. In the past, Ursula gets on board with the murder plot as Bibi and Eva reassess after their first botched effort.

Apple TV+ thriller Surface circles the drain this week as it strains for meaning and solves its many mysteries in as tidy a fashion as possible.

Sophie hears two conflicting versions of events about who she really is and where her life was headed before what was either a suicide attempt or an attempted murder. Meanwhile, her husband James and cop Thomas Baden lock horns — with Sophie’s affection their reward.

Surface’s writers have one episode after this to really make everything fall into place.

Apple TV+ thriller Five Days at Memorial enters its tragic endgame this week, with the Coast Guard forcing everyone out of the hospital. That means some patients will be left alone to die by themselves after Hurricane Katrina’s onslaught. Extraordinary measures must be taken — some ethical, some not.

The show’s cast all do their best work this week, and writer/director/producer John Ridley holds their hand every step of the way, doing right by this amazing assortment of talent.

This week on Trying, the Apple TV+ show uses the hackiest sitcom elements imaginable as a backdrop for Jason and Nikki’s emotional problems and Scott and Karen’s awakenings.

Tyler is taken by a miscommunication. Jen is having a crisis of confidence at a crossroads in her life (and Nikki’s about to make it worse). Bev’s got Jason and Nikki in a vice, and Karen may have found her calling.

Does any of this matter when every joke makes your skin crawl? No, not really.

Oh, brother, here we go again. See is back for its third and final season with more grim, doomy, portentous, heavily filtered, scowling, medieval dystopian tedium for you.

The Apple TV+ show about a future Earth where most everybody is blind takes one last lap through Joseph Campbell and the big book of heroic cliches.

Jason Momoa’s Baba Voss is on the lam, Kofun’s a father (and hates everything about it), Maghra’s having no fun at all being queen, and Kane is still insane in the membrane. Strap in.

Central Park is coming back with more musical adventures. Season three of the highly rated animated comedy will return to Apple TV+ in early September, and a trailer offering a glimpse at the upcoming fun premiered Wednesday.

The second season of Central Park scored an amazing 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

In the first trailer for upcoming docuseries Gutsy, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton take part in animated discussions with strong and accomplished women who inspire them.

The list of participants in the series, which premieres September 9 on Apple TV+, is truly varied. It includes famous names from different walks of life, including Kim Kardashian, Gloria Steinem and Jane Goodall.

Apple TV+ medical drama Five Days at Memorial, about the terrible misfortune of the staff of an abandoned hospital during Hurricane Katrina, hits the fourth day of disaster this week.

The power is still off, and the A/C is a distant memory. Helicopters are coming to evacuate, but the elevator to the roof is broken. Things are going to get worse before they get better. The gripping drama stays madly compelling and deeply tragic.

Apple TV+ mystery Surface, about a woman suffering from amnesia at the center of a dark web of mystery, finally tells the truth about who mystery woman Sophie really is.

Turns out she was the brains behind the operation, bringing herself and her husband from nothing to a beautiful house, a six-figure income, and more problems than they know how to handle.

So just how did she and James go from a young power couple lying their way to the top to a couple of criminals looking at the barrel end of jail sentences?

Apple TV+ family comedy Trying hits a snag or two this week, as Jason and Scott both realize they’re running out of road before a fall.

Jason needs money if he wants to pay for the house he’s been renting, which otherwise will be sold out from under him at any minute. Scott needs to make enough money to pay for Karen’s incoming baby, or she’ll continue looking at him as the fatuous loser with his head in the clouds that the show has more than shown us that he is.

On top of that, the adoptees’ grandmother is gunning for custody and she’s willing to fight dirty. Good, I say. This show needs some actual tragedy.

New Apple TV+ dark comedy Bad Sisters follows a family of Irish women who vow to help each other through thick and thin. Thick comes in the form of a miserable brother-in-law, who’s lying in a coffin and represents loose ends for all of them.

Can they outmaneuver a desperate insurance investigator and keep from turning on each other? This is good TV. Let’s just watch it cook.

See is coming to an end, and it’s not going quietly. A trailer for the final season of the Apple TV+ post-apocalyptic adventure series shows there’s a war brewing. One that Baba Voss (Jason Momoa) must win.

Season 3 is set to kick off on August 26.

Apple TV+ offered a first look at upcoming drama series Shantaram this week in the form of a photo of star Charlie Hunnam (Son of Anarchy) in character, plus a rundown of the cast and plot of the adventure-romance, set to premiere October 14.

And speaking of drama and adventure, the production ran into big trouble on the way to becoming a reality.

Chickie Donohue had a great idea: He wanted to bring some beer to his friends fighting in the Vietnam War. Surprisingly, it didn’t go well.

What is truly amazing is that Chickie’s story is based on real events. And it’s being turned into a coming-of-age tale called The Greatest Beer Run Ever, starring Zac Efron, which will debut September 30 on Apple TV+.

A trailer previewing Chickie’s crazy experiences premiered Wednesday.

The best way to make Apple TV+ better is to make it free. And that’s exactly the deal Best Buy is offering right now: three months of Apple’s streaming service for $0.

If you want to try Severance after the psychological thriller scored 14 Emmy nominations, you probably won’t get a better chance.

Sidney Poitier was the first Black man to win an Oscar for Best Actor. His willingness to stand up to racism made him both loved and hated in 1960s America. An Apple TV+ documentary honoring his life and legacy premieres September 23.

A trailer for the film, called simply Sidney, debuted Tuesday.

Life By Ella follows a teen as she takes herself in a bold new direction: She’s going to seize every day and experience everything she was afraid to do before. The kids and family series debuts September 2 on Apple TV+.

Apple posted an extremely upbeat trailer for the upcoming show Monday.

Two of the best-loved shows on Apple TV+ — Severance and Ted Lasso — took home honors over the weekend from the Hollywood Critics Association TV Awards.

Severance won five awards, including Best Drama, and Ted Lasso won two awards, including Best Comedy. Apple TV+ topped all streaming services with 53 nominations overall.

Surface, the Apple TV+ mystery about a woman with no memory, goes tripping in an episode filled with twists, turns, memories and hallucinations.

Sophie has a secret identity. Her husband, James, has a secret file that Baden the cop needs to steal and investigate. And literally nothing is going to go as planned. Sophie treats herself to a little psychotropic therapy when her therapist lets her down.

She learns a little more than she bargained for in this mostly OK episode.

Loot, the Apple TV+ sitcom about a rich woman discovering the meaning of life through charity work, finally hits the wall I’ve been waiting for after weeks of politesse and a too-overwhelming fear of the vulgar side of comedy.

In this week’s season finale, Molly and the crew head to Corsica for a billionaire energy summit where she must make an important choice. She must decide between her rich, debonair boyfriend and his million-dollar ideas about conservancy, and her friends who want to do real, on-the-ground work and fight the root causes of the problems facing their neighbors.

Apple TV+ series Trying, the James Corden of sitcoms, invents some new fake problems for its characters to solve this week. Tyler bumps his head, Princess steals a solution to an outcast’s problem, Nikki and Karen don’t feel like moms, Jason is disappointed in his son’s taste, and there may be a new wrinkle in the couple’s decision to keep their kids.

The writers also show their Tory hand this week with jabs at all things lower class — except when it’s necessary for our characters to engage in them. Not even a special cameo from a great villainess can lift this week’s offering above pitiful.

Apple TV+ space opera/soap opera For All Mankind closes its confounding third season this week by introducing us to a new character and a new geopolitical rival for the beleaguered space crews.

In this week’s season three finale, entitled “Stranger in a Strange Land,” Ed Baldwin learns Danny’s terrible secret. Jimmy Stevens hangs out with the wrong crowd for just a few minutes too long. Margo’s in trouble, Kelly’s giving birth, Karen’s making bold choices, and Dev is up a creek.

None of that’s going to matter by this week’s third act, of course. Just you wait and see.

Hurricane Katrina has come and gone and there are 45 unexplained deaths in a hospital in New Orleans. That’s the hook for new Apple TV+ limited series Five Days at Memorial. The titular hospital is a crowbar used to examine the carelessness of U.S. disaster-relief infrastructure, health care and our attitudes toward one another.

This all actually happened. And show creators John Ridley (12 Years a Slave) and Carlton Cuse (Lost) mean to take us uncomfortably close to the truth of what happens when Americans are faced with unprecedented situations … because we are running out of those.