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+.
Cha Cha Real Smooth looks to be a romance, a drama and a comedy all rolled into one. What do you call that? A rom-dramedy?
At any rate, Apple TV+ just put out the first trailer for the unconventional love story starring Dakota Johnson and Cooper Raiff. It premieres on June 17.
Apple TV+ offered up a new trailer Wednesday for season two of the darkish comedy Physical, starring Rose Byrne as a pioneering entrepreneur in the 1980s fitness boom in Los Angeles.
But Byrne’s character, Sheila Rubin, faces daunting competition as her husband continues to struggle with his political career.
Netflix has so far shied away from showing ads on its platform, and unlike many other streaming services, it does not offer a cheaper ad-supported tier. However, that reportedly will change by the end of the year.
The streaming service is also looking to end password sharing around the same time. So, if you have been leeching off your ex-girlfriend’s Netflix account, know that it won’t last long.
Apple has reportedly decided to push back the premiere of Emancipation. Insider sources that leaked the change did not say the delay of the historical drama staring Will Smith was the result of “The Slap,” but Smith’s shocking outburst at this year’s Academy Awards show almost certainly had to be a factor.
Emancipation is based on the real-life story of a man named Peter, whose saga of escaping slavery made headlines around the world in 1863.
This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: Haters gonna hate, but digital artist Adam Duff explains why Apple’s new Studio Display is the perfect monitor — for some users.
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.
Special thanks to this week’s sponsor, Squarespace. Get all the tools you need to set up your very own website and commence selling anything online. Start your free website trial today at squarespace.com/cultcast (no credit card required). Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain with code cultcast at checkout.
In this week’s intense installment of Shining Girls, Kirby finds the clue to her killer’s identity and Dan dries out long enough to have an epiphany of his own. The only question is, can they stop Harper before he kills again, or fundamentally alters their reality?
The new time-traveling murder mystery on Apple TV+ finally finds it footing in an investigation-heavy fourth installment.
When Apple TV+ spy thriller Tehran returns Friday, the show picks up right where it left off after its taut first season. Mossad agent/hacker Tamar’s crimes catch up with her as she waits for extraction from Iran. And humbled Revolutionary Guards chief Faraz is still seething over his seeming defeat by Mossad, with the eyes of the Iranian government on him.
The spy-on-spy action remains good, but Tehran is playing a dangerous game in dramatizing the Iranian government as the greater of two evils. I’m hoping there’s a little more lip service paid to the idea that, though Iran is the villain on this show, Israel is the aggressor. It’s something the show forgets when convenient.