The Gorge is the most popular film on streaming for a second week, according to a ratings tracker. The romantic action thriller from Apple TV+ stars Miles Teller, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Sigourney Weaver… plus a lot of monsters.
And Severance held onto a large audience of innies and outies, just as it has since early January.
★★★★☆
In our Severance season 2 episode 7 recap of the episode “Chikhai Bardo,” we finally get the backstory of Mark S.’s wife Gemma, aka Lumon Industries’ Ms. Casey. With it comes a deeper look at what’s really going at the company. And by the way, the visually stunning, intellectually challenging and jarringly unfamiliar episode takes its title from a transitional experience in Tibetan Buddhist tradition, referring to the “moment of death” prior to rebirth. But whose death and whose rebirth?
Oh, and guest stars this week come as fascinating surprises: Robby Benson as the scary Lumon dentist who whistles “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and Sandra Bernhard as a scary Lumon nurse.
Last week’s episode brought us strange liaisons inside and outside of Lumon Industries. Mark S. and Helly R. got busy in an unused Lumon office. Outie Irving attends a tense but ultimately rewarding dinner with Burt and his husband, Fields. Before the end, Mark S. took a reckless risk that looked life-threatening.
★★★★☆
The Apple TV+ original film The Gorge neatly mixes romance and action, with a pair of highly trained agents falling in love while protecting the world from horrible monsters that lie hidden in the depths of the eponymous gorge.
It’s a fun popcorn movie, with stars Miles Teller, Anya Taylor-Joy and Sigourney Weaver giving it their all. There’s plenty to enjoy for those who like action and for those who like romance. Put it on the calendar for your next date night.
That said, it benefits from the lower expectations for a straight-to-streaming film like this one. It’s fun, exciting, sweet … but not perfect.
The Apple TV+ adaptation of the brilliant Murderbot novels by Martha Wells got a premiere date for the sci-fi action series: May 16. And a first glimpse at Alexander Skarsgård as the lead character came out, too.
Plus, fans of the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning books can take hope from Apple’s synopsis of its show, as it closely follows the written version.
★★★★☆
In our Severance season 2 episode 6 recap of the episode titled “Attila,” we see strange liaisons inside and outside of Lumon Industries. Mark S. and Helly R. get busy in an unused Lumon office. Outie Irving attends a tense but ultimately rewarding dinner with Burt and his husband, Fields. Before the end, Mark S. takes a reckless risk that could be life-threatening.
Last week’s episode 5 brought us back inside Lumon Industries hallways in the aftermath of the ORTBO team-building event out in the wintry woods — and a few steps closer to solving the sinister company’s mysteries.
No Apple TV+ movie ever had a bigger opening weekend than The Gorge, according to the streaming service. It seems viewers were drawn to the romantic action thriller starring Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller. The overwhelming response has cemented The Gorge film as one of the platform’s most talked-about releases. For those who enjoy premium sound quality, the debate between AirPods Beats continues, as showcased in this Spike Jonze short film.
With its record-breaking success, the film is already being discussed among the best Apple TV movies worth watching.
And this wasn’t the only thing Apple TV+ had to crow about — it revealed on Wednesday that Severance had just become its most popular series ever.
There’s never been an Apple TV+ show with more viewers than Severance. The deeply weird workplace drama even surpassed the beloved Ted Lasso in viewers, Apple itself revealed on Wednesday.
And ratings charts concur — Severance is extremely popular.
Major League Soccer kicks off its milestone 30th season this Saturday, expanding its digital presence and viewer accessibility through its partnership with Apple TV. MLS Season Pass viewers can expect Vision Pro support, a new Android app a big interview with living soccer legend Lionel Messi, a new documentary series and more.
“With new ways to watch, expansive programming, and incredible exclusive content, this will be Major League Soccer’s biggest season yet,” said Oliver Schusser, Apple’s vice president of Apple Music, Apple TV+, Sports and Beats. “We’re excited to bring fans around the world closer to the game than ever before.”
The gorge is the door to Hell.” That’s all we learn about it from the trailer for the Apple TV+ thriller of the same name coming in February. Two agents tasked with protecting the world from whatever’s hidden in the depths are strictly forbidden to go in — but you know they’re going in. For those eager to see how the film is being received, you can check out The Gorge reviews for early impressions.
The upcoming film stars Miles Teller, Anya Taylor-Joy and Sigourney Weaver.
Update: The Gorge premiered on Apple TV+ on Friday, so it’s ready to watch for Valentine’s Day.
★★★★☆
In our Severance season 2 episode 5 recap, the maddeningly mysterious show delivers a somber and tense episode called “Trojan’s Horse.” It picks up the pieces after last week’s not-so-shocking revelation that Helena Eagan had been masquerading as innie Helly R., and Irving B. paid with his innie life to reveal it.
Last week’s episode 4 brought us into a wintry wilderness for the world’s weirdest team-building glamping trip. It turned a spotlight on Irving B. for the first time, but it also showed his likely demise as an innie as he took an uncharacteristically bold stand in the woods. Now he gets a Lumon-style funeral.
Android phones got an official Apple TV+ app on Wednesday. This makes it easier for people around the world to watch Severance, Silo and other popular series on the streaming service.
There are already versions of the application for Roku, Google TV and more.
★★★★☆
In our Severance season 2 episode 4 recap, we follow our friends from Lumon Industries’ Macradata Refinement (MDR) department into a wintry wilderness central to Kier Eagan’s lore. In the most bizarre corporate team-building event ever, two of them find forbidden love and one may never return. And it’s the first episode to take place completely outside of Lumon’s halls without visiting outies’ lives.
Last week’s episode 3 went further down innie rabbit holes in amusingly confounding ways. Ultimately, an improved-yet-still-dangerous outlaw reintegration procedure seemed like it might be outie Mark S’s path to returning to his beginnings at Lumon, cracking the sinister company’s mysteries and finding his wife. It made likely plot trajectories a little more clear. But episode 4 actually unravels some mysteries, and gives Irving B. (John Turturro) center stage for the first time.
So we know beloved hit Apple TV+ comedy series Ted Lasso will return for a fourth season. Though sources now say its production start will hit a delay of a few months. But perhaps more interesting than that: When it comes together, it will center on the formation of the AFC Richmond women’s soccer team. That departure from the show’s previous focus on the men’s squad is a major Ted Lasso season 4 shift.
Rumors have noted Coach Lasso himself (Jason Sudeikis) may be less involved this season, if at all. Maybe that’s reflected in the plot pivot. The fictional Premier League team AFC Richmond tapped a low-level American college football coach to manage the club — a ludicrously unrealistic premise, yet a charming and funny show — but for the new women’s squad he’ll merely consult, perhaps, and maybe only by SMS.
These days celebrity chefs have their own TV shows. They shill their product lines and cookbooks all over the place. But if you go back far enough, you can find the very first superstar cook who started it all, and in a very different time. That’s what Apple TV+ did with Carême, it’s upcoming French-language drama series. Like the book it’s based on, it chronicles the fascinating life of Antonin Carême, “the world’s first celebrity chef who secretly served as a spy in Napoleon’s Europe,” as the streamer put it.
The series, premiering April 30, stars César Award winner Benjamin Voisin as Carême. Apple TV+ offered several appetizing photographs Wednesday as a first look at the show.
Severance costars Patricia Arquette and Adam Scott faced off in a funny, face-melting hot chicken wing-eating contest Tuesday in a new video from the show Hot Ones Versus.
In the words of the show, “today, these co-stars will have two choices: Tell the truth, or suffer the wrath of the Last Dab. Whoever eats the most wings, loses!”
The wings are spicy enough for the show to call them “Wings of Death,” and their spicy pain showed in the actors’ suffering as well as the teeny, tiny little bites they took when they missed a question.
Apple TV+ trots out the word “gritty” in press materials that go with its gripping new trailer for Berlin ER, the upcoming German-language hospital drama formerly known as Krank Berlin. And for the first time, PR for the show seems to actually live up to that description.
The trailer makes the new series look raw, with a visceral realism about the harsh realities of an inner-city hospital that makes me want to watch it, even if I have to use subtitles (or maybe, ugh, dubbed English). The eight-episode series starts streaming on Apple TV+ February 26.
In Surface season 2, amnesiac Sophie enters a whole new world in London on her search for lost memories. But she ends up embroiled in a British aristocratic scandal, tangling with people far more dangerous than they seem on the, er, surface, according the new trailer Apple TV+ dropped Monday.
The psychological thriller returns for its eight-episode second season on Apple TV+ Friday, February 21.
★★★★☆
In our Severance season 2 episode 3 recap, I confess I felt my patience with the endlessly weird show might expire, as yet another maybe-just-weird-for-weird’s-sake thing happened. But then an intriguing puzzle piece appeared, dangled like a treat, and my rising impatience fell away. For now. In a good puzzle-box show, that’s how it works.
Last week’s episode 2 showed what it took, from outies’ perspectives, for Mr. Milchick, Helena Eagan and others to get the innie Macrodata Refinement crew back to work after the Overtime Contingency allowed them temporary freedom. This week’s episode goes further down innie rabbit holes, slowly luring us toward who the hell knows what. But at least there are a lot more goats, and an improved-yet-still-dangerous outlaw reintegration procedure might be outie Mark S’s path to cracking Lumon’s mysteries and finding his wife.
In other words, the whole season’s story arc became more clear in this episode.
A featured MLS game each week will appear on Apple TV+ in a new series billed as Sunday Night Soccer.
This is a similar arrangement to Friday Night Baseball that the streaming service began offering several years ago.
Netflix introduced a new “Season Download” button in its app Wednesday that allows iPhone and iPad users to download entire seasons of their favorite shows with a single tap. That streamlines offline viewing for iOS users, who previously had to download episodes individually.
It’d be nice if Apple TV+ did that too, right?
Popular Apple TV+ gaming comedy Mythic Quest may be going to heaven — and we don’t mean cancellation. The game at the show’s core may adopt the concept of heaven, accessible only by a valiant death. The show finally returns with season four on Wednesday. And the streamer offered a sneak peek at the first four+ minutes Monday, following its recent official trailer. You can watch both below.
Update: The first two episodes of season four of Mythic Quest now stream on Apple TV+. One review called it “as delightful and dysfunctional as ever.”
Apple TV+ dropped a Severance promo video Friday with cast members reading and (mostly) debunking online fan ideas guessing at answers to the show’s mysteries. But at the end of the video, executive producer and director Ben Stiller offers a clue that “no one talks about.” Is it a real clue, or is he just trolling everybody?
You can view the new fan-theory video and an older one below. They mention many theories, though even more exist online. And some fans says these videos ignore the best theories that seem more likely to be true (take your pick from cloning, aliens and more).
In yet another promo for Apple TV+’s intriguing workplace thriller Severance, Apple CEO Tim Cook gets in on the action. Severance director and executive producer Ben Stiller dropped a video Friday morning on X.com starring the mild-mannered tech honcho. Cook reports for orientation as an innie on the severed floor of Lumon Industries.
The video is short, but Cook isn’t bad — especially in the elevator, where he shows his severed transformation in consciousness (with the help of some special effects). Then, near the end of the video, he made me laugh out loud.
★★★★☆
In our Severance season 2 episode 2 recap, we discover the lengths to which Lumon Industries went to clean up after the Overtime Contingency (OTC) that enabled the rebelling innies to briefly escape to the outside world at the end of season one.
In last week’s season two debut, the Macrodata Refinement (MDR) crew came back to work on the severed floor. This week’s episode, “Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig,” doubles back to show what it took for Mr. Milchick, Helena Eagan and others to get them there. It doesn’t quite have the first episode’s high impact — it brought the show back to us after season one’s climactic cliffhangers three years ago — but it clarifies matters while introducing new questions.
We might not have seen the last of The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin. Despite the abrupt — and somewhat baffling — departure of star Noel Fielding, the producers of the Apple TV+ comedy series are reportedly trying to convert what was already filmed for season two into a movie of some sort.
But that still leaves plenty of people wondering what the heck is going on with Fielding.