★★★★☆
The Big Door Prize focuses on the prickly mayor of Deerfield this week. The Apple TV+ show, about a small town interrupted in a big way by a machine that’s supposed to be capable of telling people’s futures, digs deep into the hidden feelings among Deerfield’s citizenry.
The episode, entitled “Izzy,” proves very affecting.
★★★☆☆
Ted Lasso finds almost everyone in a rut this week. Keeley is a wreck after leaked footage of her reaches the internet, and it may have even worse consequences than she fears. Ted thinks his wife is going to get engaged to someone else — and he’s not handling it well.
The thornier-than-usual episode, entitled “We’ll Never Have Paris,” still comes with the usual gallon of sentimentality we expect from the most popular show on Apple TV+.
★★★☆☆
Apple TV+ thriller The Last Thing He Told Me hits the books this week as Bailey and Hannah recover from some dead ends and track down some new promising leads in the search for a missing man.
The limited series, about an AWOL software programmer and the trail of devastation he left behind him, finds bereaved Hannah and Bailey inching closer to the truth of who their husband/father really was, while the noose tightens back home. The episode, entitled “Witness to Your Life,” is a reasonably gripping installment of a show that’s getting a little better with each episode.
★★★★☆
New Apple TV+ series Drops of God, about a contest of senses to win the fortune of the world’s most famous eccentric wine connoisseur, hits a roadblock this week. Issei considers quitting — and Camille isn’t 100% she’s ready to face him if he doesn’t.
Plus, Camille hatches an elaborate plot to get herself back on equal footing with Issei. And Issei’s plans to save face don’t go as planned. Entitled “Duel,” it’s a most exciting episode of this excitingly peculiar show.
★★★☆☆
Apple TV+ musical comedy Schmigadoon! finds love in all the wrong places this week. Melissa goes from nobody to somebody, and Josh finds his calling as a spiritual leader, which is the last thing they need right now.
In their quest to make things right in Schmicago, they tangle things up worse than ever — and they clearly don’t have a clean exit strategy. The episode, entitled “Famous as Hell,” is a rousing chapter of the Schmigadoon! saga.
★★★☆☆
Ted Lasso, the Apple TV+ show dipped in positivity and marinated in feculence, sketches a few days in a few of its characters’ lives this week.
Ted, Beard and Roy attempt Total Football. Sam is hounded by the political climate. Keeley needs to learn when to say when, and Jamie has a breakthrough. An otherwise very strong episode of the biggest hit on Apple TV+ is undercut by the series’ usual foibles in the episode, entitled “The Strings That Bind Us.”
★★★★☆
The Big Door Prize throws a gala this week in an emotional installment of the Apple TV+ show about a town upended by an apparently psychic machine.
Cass gives herself a huge project, and only Giorgio seems to be on her wavelength about its relative importance. Meanwhile, Dusty gets high, Father Reuben gets jealous, and Izzy goes on the warpath in a very successful episode, entitled “Giorgio.”
★★☆☆☆
Extrapolations creator Scott Z. Burns brings his wildly misguided and ambitious Apple TV+ show about global warming, to a close this week the only way he possibly could: with a lengthy, boring courtroom drama
The cast comes out for a bow to sum up, loudly and with no subtext, all of Burns’ findings and thoughts about global climate change and how people need to do something about it. The Extrapolations finale, entitled “2070: Ecocide,” proves just as thrilling as it sounds.
★★★☆☆
The Last Thing He Told Me, the new Apple TV+ thriller series about a woman and her moody teenage stepdaughter investigating a disappearance, finds the beleaguered pair in Austin, Texas, this week.
Revelations come fast and furious, and Bailey’s reluctant march toward the wrong conclusion keeps her on edge, while Hannah questions everything she thought she knew. The episode, entitled “Keep Austin Weird,” represents a major step up for this limited series. But there’s still a lot of ground to cover before it could hope to arrive at great.
★★★★☆
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.