★★★★☆
New Apple TV+ series Drops of God centers on two people possessed by their devotion to and understanding of the art of creating wine. A young heiress to a fortune in wine has to compete with her father’s favorite protege in order to prove which of them learned anything from his years of trying to impart wisdom.
Based on a manga and dripping in elegance, this one’s got a lot to recommend it.
★★★☆☆
A few years after the impressive Tiny World, Apple TV+ delivers its antithesis — Big Beasts, a nature documentary series that serves up a look at the largest creatures on earth.
Narrated by Tom Hiddleston, this playful and awed series is aimed at children ready to be sucked into the drama of the natural world (or a slightly older audience doing laundry). It’s ideal afternoon viewing for both demographics.
★★★☆☆
This week on Apple TV+ musical comedy fantasia Schmigadoon!, Melissa and Paul try to leave Schmicago but learn that nothing is ever easy in a musical. The two lost lovers must figure out a way to sew a little harmony in their new digs. However, these people aren’t just garden-variety sad — they’re deranged and miserable.
This is going to be harder than they think. It’s also quite entertaining, thanks to a handful of great musical numbers in the episode, entitled “Something Real.”
★★★★☆
Apple TV+ sci-fi comedy The Big Door Prize, about a machine that reads people’s potential and possibly their future, takes a hard look this week at a character who’s maybe hardest to like among the ensemble.
Beau goes on the hunt for a cheater. Giorgio continues his quest to best Dusty. Trina has a terrible realization. And Jacob bears the brunt of it all, as usual. The episode, entitled “Beau,” serves up quite a good showing from the cast and writers. It’s one of the season’s best yet.
★★★☆☆
Ted Lasso, the Apple TV+ show about a feel-good soccer coach who’s having a feel-bad time, takes a trip to Amsterdam this week. After another crushing loss, everyone sets out on their own adventures for a night on the town.
Rebecca meets a most charming man in an uncharming location. Ted and Beard trip on their trip. Roy and Jamie share some secrets over a bike ride. And the rest of the team can’t pick a way to unwind. It’s a revealing little jaunt for this crew and a mostly very entertaining outing.
★★★☆☆
Guess who’s coming to dinner this week on Extrapolations, the sci-fi omnibus from Apple TV+? Veteran TV director Nicole Holofcener goes for the gusto as the worst dinner party in America goes off the rails.
An all-star cast, and a lot of pent-up energy, help this week’s episode — entitled “2068: The Going-Away Party” — stand apart from previous episodes.
★★★☆☆
In new Apple TV+ limited series The Last Thing He Told Me, a woman realizes she knows less about her husband than she thought after he goes missing. Together with her angry stepdaughter, she must figure out what went wrong — and what her husband actually did for a living.
Based on the bestselling book of the same name by Laura Daves, and starring Jennifer Garner (Alias, Dallas Buyers Club), the show certainly isn’t a failure. However, slack elements in the first two episodes, which premiered today on Apple’s streaming service, keep the mystery from realizing its potential.
★★★☆☆
The Big Door Prize, the Apple TV+ sci-fi/comedy about a mysterious machine that reveals people’s potential, reaches deeper into despair and goofiness this week.
Dusty and Cass’ daughter Trina celebrates a depressing milestone and is acting out to make sure everyone knows it. Plus, Dusty and Cass try a romantic getaway and find nothing but surprises, both welcome and unwelcome, waiting for them.
In the episode, entitled “Trina,” The Big Door Prize flexes its tonal muscles.
tvOS 16.4.1 is out to deal with some bugs in Apple TV devices. This comes several days after new bug-fix updates for iPhone, Mac and iPad.
A fresh tvOS update means there’s new HomePod software, too.
★★★★☆
Apple TV+ musical comedy Schmigadoon! lets its hair down this week as Josh goes on the lam and Melissa goes on the hunt for clues. Plus, Jane Krakowski gets an MVP moment that caps a very fun outing for the cast and writers.
The musical numbers in this week’s episode, entitled “Bells and Whistles,” prove stellar. And Schmigadoon! delivers more laughs per minute than usual, which means the second season of the feather-light show totally found its groove.
★★★☆☆
Apple TV+ smash hit Ted Lasso needs a win this week, as AFC Richmond’s losing streak makes the team a laughing stock.
Ted’s not thinking clearly. Rebecca is seeing evidence everywhere that a psychic prediction about her is coming true — and it’s freaking her out. Keeley handles an unruly employee and makes a new friend. Nate has a minor victory off the pitch.
The episode, entitled “Signs,” is a perfectly good outing of the perennially upbeat football show.
★★☆☆☆
Extrapolations, the too-ambitious-in-all-the-wrong-ways Apple TV+ science fiction show “about” global climate change, revisits an old friend this week for a look at the courier job from hell.
The show’s focus this time around is not on the environment but rather on the personal toll of living in a future you can’t control or understand. The episode, entitled “2066: Lola,” is a laborious and overfamiliar story that is, for no good reason, longer than almost every other episode of Extrapolations.
★★★★☆
The first season of Hello Tomorrow!, the Apple TV+ show about men selling lunar dreams and lies, comes to a close this week in high style.
Jack needs to tie up some loose ends, and he has no plan for what happens when his clients finally get to the moon. His son Joey must figure out who to honor, his mother or his father. Eddie has butterfingers and Shirley has to pay for it. And someone is, at long last, awake.
The season finale, entitled “What Could Be Better?,” is a great conclusion to a great season.
★★★☆☆
Apple TV+’s high-concept existential comedy The Big Door Prize tackles the big questions this week. A small town has been invaded by something called the Morpho machine, a device that prints out cards based on people’s identities and tells them what they’re meant to be in life.
Some people love the Morpho machine and the big changes it triggers. Others, like our hero Dusty and a local priest, have issues with it. A strong showing from The Big Door Prize cast helps this week’s episode, entitled, “Father Reuben,” go down easy.
★★★☆☆
It’s payback time this week on Ted Lasso. Nate and Ted are due to face off after their acrimonious split at the end of last season. As usual, Ted doesn’t want to go negative. And, though Nate has unequivocally already gone negative, he feels bad about it.
Meanwhile, Keeley’s having second thoughts about Jamie and Shandy, Rebecca’s in an awkward position, an important financier shows up to the game, and Ted’s got the blues. Entitled “Big Week,” it’s a pretty solid episode of the biggest hit on Apple TV+, all things considered.
★★★☆☆
Apple TV+ musical Schmigadoon! is whistling a brand-new tune. Our heroes find themselves not in the 1950s musical world of Schmigadoon, but in the bleaker, ’70s-style Schmicago.
The whimsy of the show’s first season is replaced with a sarcastic darkness in its second season, which debuts today. The songs get racier, but the show remains much the same. Schmigadoon! is still one of the better shows on Apple’s streaming service.
★★★☆☆
Apple TV+ climate disaster show Extrapolations takes a road trip this week to the sweltering underbelly of a continent in crisis. Across two long days, unlikely allies will transport a secret package that many other interested parties are gunning for.
Extrapolations is essentially an omnibus series about the future, as seen through the eyes of people affected by climate change. That means every episode bears a distinct identity. In this week’s installment, entitled “2059 Part II: Nightbirds,” the creative team hits upon something partly neo-realist, partly Bourne-inspired action and party speculative fiction. It’s the most consistent and engrossing episode of the very patchy show so far.
★★★★☆
Apple TV+ espionage thriller Liaison comes to its breakneck conclusion this week. Alison and Gabriel get Samir and his information to England, but can they make it to the right authorities in time to save the continent from terrorism and extortion? And just who is the right authority, anyway?
Samir and Sabine have an appointment with Antropa, Bob and Didier must pay the piper, and Gabriel has one last trial in which to prove himself. All things considered, the Liaison finale brings a pretty decent conclusion to a star-studded limited series.
★★★★☆
Hello Tomorrow!, the Apple TV+ show about a Space Age con man and the hapless people stuck in his whirlwind, makes a fateful stop at a baseball game this week.
Lunar real-estate salesman Jack Billings goes deeper into his deception now that he’s found a financier with even fewer scruples than he has about cheating people out of their money. And his son Joey, desperate to get through to his dad, decides to finally start trying to put Jack away for his crimes.
Meanwhile, Shirley and Eddie are in deep money trouble and have nowhere nice to turn. And Herb is left picking up after everyone. The episode, entitled “Certain Forces Once Unleashed,” delivers a bracing half-hour of television.
★★☆☆☆
Ted Lasso wrangles with a fresh face — and even bigger ego — this week. There’s a new player stealing the spotlight from everyone else on the pitch in the Apple TV+ hit comedy about the little football club that could. And star striker Jamie Tartt isn’t happy about the new guy’s arrival at all.
Plus, Ted endures his own crisis when he calls home at the wrong moment and finds another man’s voice on the phone. And Rebecca gets an eerie prediction. The episode, entitled “4 5 1,” is a fairly standard edition of the show about how positive thinking can change everything (except maybe my attitude toward Ted Lasso).
★★★☆☆
New Apple TV+ high-concept sci-fi comedy The Big Door Prize stars perennial sad sack Chris O’Dowd as a man whose little world is rocked when a strange machine appears in the general store of his small town. Suddenly, friends and neighbors are changing their lives — and he feels out of step.
Funny, thought-provoking and sad, The Big Door Prize makes an interesting addition to the Apple TV+ lineup.
★★★☆☆
Apple TV+ spy thriller Liaison hits a few snags this week on its way to justice and catharsis. A mostly great episode finds Alison, Gabriel, Dumas and Sophie Saint Roche making deals with unlikely allies on their mad scramble to prevent a private war against the whole of Europe.
Didier is desperate, Sabine is growing hopeless, Alison’s father is in critical condition, and Dumas grows a conscience. There’s blood in the water in this episode, entitled “Family Album.” Who will make it out alive?
★☆☆☆☆
Apple TV+ series Dear Edward brings its tedious first season to a close this week. Edward winds up lost in the big city, sending his adoptive mom Lacey into hysterics. Plus, Dee Dee’s feeling very unappreciated, Shay and Edward get a second chance, Steve and Amanda have a choice to make, and there’s a party on the horizon.
The Dear Edward season finale, entitled “Shelter,” is a whiff of an ending to a whiff of a season. This show, supposedly about grief in the wake of a catastrophic plane crash, turns out to be largely about nothing at all.
★★★★☆
Hello Tomorrow! returns for more Space Age shenanigans — and a brutal comeuppance for one of Earth’s biggest liars. The Apple TV+ show about a guy selling bunk timeshares on the moon finally hits the pause button on momentum to allow a devastating realization to sink in.
Salesman/con artist Jack Billings may be more doomed than he thinks, even as he succeeds beyond his wildest dreams. Shirley and Joey have had enough, Myrtle gets the sign she’s been searching for, Herb makes good, and Jack has to save an old hero in this stellar episode, entitled “The Gargon Mothership.”
★★☆☆☆
Apple TV+ limited series Extrapolations steeps itself in sci-fi wonkery this week as members of a tech billionaire family find themselves on opposing sides of a terrorist action meant to move the needle on climate change.
Novelist Dave Eggers joins the show’s writing team this week, and Edward Norton, Indira Varma and Michael Gandolfini lead the cast.
While this isn’t a bad version of what Extrapolations set out to do, the show’s sprawling mission statement remains blinkered.