★★★☆☆
Shining Girls enters its endgame this week in a thrilling episode that’s heavy on plot and light on psychological depth. Just as Kirby (played by Elisabeth Moss) thinks she finally understands the next step in serial killer Harper’s game plan, reporter Dan runs off to chase leads. And her bewildered husband Marcus betrays them both without meaning to.
Can anyone hold onto their reality long enough to come out on top? This terrifically directed episode has the answers.
★★★★☆
Apple TV+’s Now and Then, a Miami-based murder mystery, starts to play dirty this week.
New roommates Marcos, Isabel and Sofia are primed to turn on each other. Political couple Ana and Pedro have a huge, expensive mess on their hands. Mother and son Daniela and Hugo might have more secrets than anyone. And Detective Neruda finally opens up about the reasons she’s so committed to catching and convicting all of them.
This sleek little show has as much confidence as it does wonderfully seedy plot threads. The excellent first season continues apace.
★★★★★
There’s a party tonight on The Essex Serpent and everyone’s invited. But no one’s going to have the time they imagined. Things take a turn for the biblical this week with red paint on sinners’ homes and adultery in every hearth. Dancing leads to sex, and nobody’s in the bed they ought to be.
Apple TV+ miniseries The Essex Serpent bids a tearful farewell to good taste this week — and then enjoys the ever-loving hell out of the depraved no man’s land.
☆☆☆☆☆
Apple TV+ is trying to kill me, specifically, the guy writing this. They’re trying to kill me. Send help. I am begging you, find someone, call the United Nations. You see, Apple TV+ bought Carpool Karaoke from The Late Late Show With James Corden — and it’s bringing the dreadful reality show back for another season.
The only saving grace is that Corden is not here, presumably because he’s harvesting the tears of children. There’s puff journalism, and then there’s treating the idea of Carpool Karaoke as some beloved cultural fixture and allowing celebrities the chance to “prove” how well they can sing and how fun they are.
Microsoft confirmed Friday it’s developing a low-cost streaming device that would allow users to play Xbox games and stream media without needing a full console. That could directly compete with Apple TV.
Meanwhile, Apple’s product — sometimes criticized as overpriced — may see a less-expensive iteration later this year, according to analysts.
“Here he comes. Here comes Speed Racer.” The theme song to the classic cartoon could be referring to a live-action Speed Racer series reportedly headed for Apple TV+.
It’ll supposedly have J.J. Abrams as executive producer.
Actor Ray Liotta, famous for his roles in Goodfellas, Field of Dreams, Cop Land and other films and TV shows, died in his sleep Thursday at age 67, his publicist said.
Liotta also stars in the upcoming Apple TV+ drama series Black Bird, set to premiere on July 8.
Some sources suggest Apple TV+ has already signed a deal for the rights to NFL Sunday Ticket. Now a new report say the football league’s planned NFL Plus streaming service could sweeten the deal for Apple — or another winning bidder, as the case may turn out to be.
The two services together on Apple TV+ could offer fans a great selection of viewing options.
Apple TV users should install a system software patch released Wednesday. tvOS 15.5.1 apparently fixes a small bug in the latest big update, which Apple released last week.
The patch comes out in unison with a small update to HomePod software.
It’s dinosaur week on Apple TV+. There’s a new episode of Prehistoric Planet on every night, and critics are heaping praise on the docuseries.
It has a 100% positive score on the review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes.
This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: That big, flat Apple Watch redesign we expected in 2021 might arrive this year to soothe our lingering disappointment. The latest renders by Ian Zelbo, spurred by a tweet from leaker ShrimpApplePro, make Apple Watch Series 8 look quite appealing.
Also on The CultCast:
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 livestream, embedded below.
This week’s show is sponsored by Jamf Now and Squarespace. See below for special offers.
★★★★☆
Apple TV+’s newest docuseries is Prehistoric Planet, which delves into the lives and habits of a host of dinosaurs. Arriving next week — just in time to get kids of all ages excited about Jurassic World Dominion — the five-part series offers all the usual pleasures of presenter David Attenborough’s nature documentaries.
Viewers can learn — and be awed by the state-of-the-art CGI creature design and gorgeous location photography — all at once.
★★☆☆☆
Apple TV+ spy thriller Tehran throws a sexy and tense pool party so Mossad agent Tamar can get one over on her targets: the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and his tech bro son. She has to play a game of cat and mouse with a couple of rich, violent people to get close enough to deploy a decoy that will give her the upper hand — and maybe kill the man responsible for the deaths of her family.
Of course, she put them in danger in the first place, something the show isn’t interested in exploring anymore now that there’s a new spy game afoot. But no matter. Once more unto the breach.
★★★★☆
New Apple TV+ series The Essex Serpent is knee-deep in conspiracy and suspicion already. The English townspeople think Naomi Banks is some kind of witch, and they don’t think much better of interloper Cora Seaborne, either.
This week’s episode, entitled “Falling,” goes to place unexpected and expected — and both are as exciting to arrive at.
★★★☆☆
Apple TV+ thriller Shining Girls takes a detour into the past to reveal the origins of serial killer Harper Curtis and the time-traveling house. It involves a broken friendship, a dead elderly couple, and more lies and betrayals.
Harper wasn’t always a maniac traveling through time killing whomever struck his fancy, though. He was once a lowly doughboy with no dreams and a crush. And then, power turned him evil.
★★★★☆
Now and Then, the new time-hopping Apple TV+ show about a group of friends who reminisce about youthful indiscretions as new mysteries present themselves, is a noirish riff on The Big Chill and Stephen King’s It.
The bilingual series, which premieres Friday, showcases a great cast doing ruthless character work. And the creative team includes prolific and highly successful showrunners and writers Ramón Campos, Teresa Fernández-Valdés and Gema R. Neira.
With so much talent on board, it’s easy to fall into Now and Then’s lithe setting, sexy milieu and casual backstabbing.
A couple of enormous sauropods go head to head. A herd of ceratopsia takes on a predator in a driving snowstorm. A pair of tyrannosaurs share a tender moment. All of these are highlights of the second trailer for Prehistoric Planet, coming soon to Apple TV+.
This five-night docuseries will explore the age of the dinosaurs from the Arctic to the oceans.
If you’re a fan of critically acclaimed Apple TV+ space drama For All Mankind, brace for impact. Apple launched the season 3 trailer Monday.
In it, the alt-reality vision of a decades-long space race rockets off to Mars.
The Apple TV+ teaser trailer for the upcoming animated film Luck explains how luck really works: it’s controlled by magical creatures. The star-studded film by Skydance Animation will be about the unluckiest person in the world visiting the Land of Luck.
Watch the trailer to see more – and learn more about luck.
★★☆☆☆
Apple TV+ show Tehran puts its second-season plot in motion this week, but the Israeli espionage drama keeps making bizarre missteps in its pursuit of pulse-pounding thrills, twists and turns.
Manjar steps into Farraz’s home in the perfect disguise, Tamar tries out her new character, Milad almost screws everything up for all of them.
Everybody’s tense and everybody’s guilty, as usual. And Tehran continues to benefit from good performances, tight editing and solid music and sound design, which keep every nail-biting scene running efficiently. But is that enough to save the show from an increasingly blinkered perspective?
Apple TV+ listed its new lineup of shows and specials for kids and families set to air this summer, including new series like Duck & Goose and Best Foot Forward plus Peanuts specials and new episodes of fan-favorite shows.
The new summer lineup of kids shows will kick off in July with the first series, Duck & Goose.
You can watch a trailer all about the summer’s content and how to watch it below with Jack McBrayer from Hello Jack! The Kindness Show.
★★☆☆☆
Popular new Apple TV+ series Shining Girls keeps finding new clues to the identity of its time-traveling menace Harper. Meanwhile, Kirby and her reporter co-worker Dan get closer to breakthroughs — and further from normalcy — at every turn.
Kirby must ensure she doesn’t alienate everyone in her life just when she needs them most, even as she tightens the noose around Harper. Dan just needs to make sure Kirby doesn’t come across as an unreliable witness.
☆☆☆☆☆
Apple TV+’s most shameless cash grab is back for a truly unearned victory lap. Gotham Chopra and Co. have crafted the thoroughly un-asked-for second season of Greatness Code, the only show on TV about how great and talented athletes are.
Oh, what’s that? There are 10 million other shows about the same thing, and they’re all more involved than 10-minute interviews with competently animated interstitials and some vague notion of what makes an athlete “great”?
Well shut my mouth. Guess there’s no reason to watch this one, is there?
A new Apple TV streamer will launch in the second half of 2022, according to a trusted analyst. And there’s a hint in the prediction that the device will cost less than its predecessors.
A cheaper version of Apple’s set-top box could help it grab a higher share of the set-top box market. And it could certainly use the boost.
★★★★☆
The Essex Serpent is Apple TV+’s first foray into folk horror and a welcome return to BBC-style costume dramas. Based on the book by Sarah Perry, and starring Claire Danes and Tom Hiddleston, this series holds a lot of promise in its deviously clever premise.
Shepherded by writer Anna Symon (Dark Matters: Twisted But True, Deep Water) and director Clio Barnard (The Arbor, The Selfish Giant), the series’ excellent production design and game cast make The Essex Serpent appointment television. You can watch the first two episodes Friday on Apple TV+.