Scout Tafoya is a film and TV critic, director and creator of the long-running video essay series The Unloved for RogerEbert.com. He has written for The Village Voice, Film Comment, The Los Angeles Review of Books and Nylon Magazine. He is the director of 25 feature films, and the author of more than 300 video essays, which can be found at his Patreon.
We don't get nearly enough Imelda Staunton this season. Photo: Apple TV+
No one’s favorite young parents-to-be return for another go-round in Trying, the maddening Apple TV+ show about the travails of a British couple who really want children.
Unfortunately, the show’s second season, which debuts Friday, proves just as exhausting and depressing as its first.
Even the Staples Singers can't save this nostalgia-riddled mess. Photo: Apple TV+
With 1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything, Apple TV+ tried to buy itself a Ken Burns-style documentary about the potent cultural impact of rock and soul. Unfortunately, the eight-episode documentary series, which premieres Friday, proves so low-energy it will put you to sleep.
This deceptively “comprehensive” look at a single year in music history proves as scatterbrained and toothless as a school project. The impression it leaves is not that 1971 really changed everything, but that no one is even remotely willing to admit that their favorite bands really aren’t that interesting.
Aunt Lucretia (played by Ofelia Medina) and Enrique (Bruno Bicher) heat things up in this week's episode. Photo: Apple TV+
Thanks to a last-minute call to a new ally, things seem to be looking up for the Foxes in this week’s episode of The Mosquito Coast. Or have they left the frying pan and stepped into the fire?
Time will tell, but it seems likely that Allie Fox will find some way to slip out of the noose if that’s what waiting for him. Director Rupert Wyatt is back behind the camera for an exciting new episode of Apple TV+ drama.
Rob McElhenney leads an excellent cast in a strong second season. Photo: Apple TV+
In its second season, Mythic Quest doubles down on characters and lets workplace dynamics subsume the work itself. The creative team that drives the Apple TV+ comedy about game developers found the sweet spots that made the first season above average, then worked on them like mechanics.
The result is a season every bit as strong as the first — and one that portends greatness for the future.
Justin Theroux's manic performance gives The Mosquito Coast an edge. Photo: Apple TV+
This week on The Mosquito Coast, the Foxes are on the run and the heat is hot on their tail — in every way possible.
The third episode of Apple TV+’s paranoid new drama can’t do much but crawl. But it covers some important ground. And strong acting and clever writing again combine to keep you hooked.
Justin Theroux, Melissa George, Logan Polish and Gabriel Bateman in The Mosquito Coast Photo: Apple TV+
The Mosquito Coast, the original cautionary fable about off-the-grid living, gets a shiny new update on Apple TV+ just as we’re all itching to get back out in the world after a year in quarantine.
Shepherded by director Rupert Wyatt and starring Justin Theroux, the show is an interesting addition to the ever-growing Apple TV+ lineup. It’s paranoid, fraught and full of personality.
In the season 2 finale, the fate of the moon rests on Gordo's unlikely shoulders. Photo: Apple TV+
The Russians have taken over the moon! The second season of Apple TV+ space soap For All Mankind ends with bloody faces, broken marriages, uncertain futures, and a whole boatload of moon crime.
If you’re wondering if any of it’s handled well, read on. But you know the score by now, don’t you?
This show might be tense in another time line. Photo: Apple TV+
This week on For All Mankind, Russians are blockading the moon and Ed Baldwin’s going up to set ’em straight. Can old-fashioned American ingenuity prevent the reignition of the Cold War?
Be honest, are you even watching Apple TV+’s alt-history space race show?
The astonishing docuseries about Earth's tiniest inhabitants is back and as cute as ever. Photo: Apple TV+
Two of Apple TV’s big nature shows just returned back for their second seasons mere months after they debuted. Tiny World is the cuter of the two. Its micro look at a macro world remains charming, cute and sometimes despairing and gross, but never so much you couldn’t show it to kids.
Season 2 of Apple's nighttime nature doc delivers amazing new delights. Photo: Apple TV+
Apple TV+ docuseries Earth at Night in Color delivers a fresh batch of majestic nighttime sights, cruel natural phenomena and fascinating perspectives in its second season, which premieres today. The show didn’t quite reinvent the nature documentary wheel, but it still offers a welcome retreat from the horrors of 2021.
David Attenborough and penguins teach us about the unexpected positive side effects of the pandemic. Photo: Apple TV+
A nature special and a cautionary tale, The Year Earth Changed delivers a whole mess of qualified good news that you’re going to wish didn’t come with so many strings attached to it. An engaging, largely drone-shot 45 minutes of TV, the new Apple TV+ documentary about the environmental effects of the COVID-19 pandemic won’t change your life. But it will make you feel slightly better about having just spent the last year indoors.
Things are not going well, either on Earth or in space. Photo: Apple TV+
In this week’s episode, Apple TV+’s alternate-history space show For All Mankind finally gets to the big, violent “what if?” it’s been building to all season. Is it too late to make any of the fireworks they’ve seen saving go off in spectacular enough fashion to save a dreary second season?
Ellen Wilson (played by Jodi Balfour) makes an unbelievable move this week. Photo: Apple TV+
Space-race soap opera For All Mankind drops a bomb this week that could ruin the chances of everybody here getting what they want — and definitely destroys whatever character work the writers and actors have done up until now.
The writers realized nothing exciting had happened all season and so just dropped a bunch of character arcs in favor of what’s convenient. I wish I was surprised.
U.S. astronauts like Danielle Poole (played by Krys Marshall) prep to meet their Soviet counterparts. Photo: Apple TV+
The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming! Don’t bother they’re here … Apple TV+’s For All Mankind gears up for its historic moon handshake in typically laidback fashion in this week’s episode.
The commies are here to collaborate on a space mission meant to bring civilizations together. They’re of course mirthless, shifty cads because that’s just how Russians are written in fiction like this.
Until, of course, they get to eat red meat and drink American whiskey. Then they’re all smiles! Glad to know these jokes haven’t changed at all since the Iron Curtain went up.
Gordo (Michael Dorman) is getting his groove back at last. Photo: Apple TV+
The characters in For All Mankind, Apple TV+’s space-race melodrama, all try to find their sea legs … or, uhh, space legs … in this week’s tense episode. Astronaut Ed Baldwin is under the sea. And his wife, Karen, is losing her cool. Meanwhile, Tracy Stevens is on the moon, and her ex Gordo is losing his mind!
With new show Calls, Apple TV+ brings a French TV sensation to America and it’s three things in one. It’s a fascinating experiment, an old idea repackaged — and something of a missed opportunity.
The series, which premieres this Friday, hides its star-studded voice cast behind pixelated images and on-screen text, making it sort of an anti-event. That alone means Calls faces an uphill climb to find a new audience.
Even Spider-Man can't save this disaster. Photo: Apple TV+
After years of shepherding the Marvel Cinematic Universe to its first major climax, directors Joe and Anthony Russo decided to make one of the proverbial “one for us” movies — as in “one for them, one for us.”
It’s a classic Hollywood strategy, where filmmakers follow up a moneymaking blockbuster with a personal project that’s more like an indie flick. The trouble with the Russo brothers “one for us” movie — a drama called Cherry, comes to Apple TV+ today — is that the “us” in this case possess no style, no ideology, no ideas and no ambition. Cherry is a total waste of $10 million and 2-and-a-half hours of screen time.
Ed Baldwin preps for a new mission in "Pathfinder." Photo: Apple TV+
On this week’s installment of Apple TV+’s labored and single-minded For All Mankind, the next space flight is on everyone’s mind as the NASA crew careens toward destiny.
Astronaut Ed Baldwin (played by Joel Kinnaman) still has his head in the clouds. Photo: Apple TV+
There are guns on the moon — repeat there are guns on the moon — in a new For All Mankind with a mildly elevated pulse! Everyone’s making hard choices and living with regrets on this week’s episode of no one’s favorite space soap on Apple TV+.
Will Pullen plays the ghost of Emily's future in the season 2 finale. Photo: Apple TV+
Bad dreams, dead rebels, crumbling marriages, and new babies all collide in Dickinson’s season 2 finale.
The Apple TV+ show about the famous feminist legend of poetry needs to tie up a lot of loose ends. But it’s got to also leave enough left unanswered to entice viewers for next season. Can it accomplish all this on its own terms?
Alice and Sophie say a long goodbye at last. Photo: Apple TV+
On this week’s Losing Alice, Apple TV+’s erotic thriller series about filmmaking, director Alice has a big premiere coming up but her star isn’t present. Just what happened in Room 209 — and what’s next?
Astronaut Tracy (played by Sarah Jones) goes Hollywood. Photo: Apple TV+
For All Mankind, the Apple TV+ soap opera about the lives of astronauts in an alternate-history America, takes a few leaps toward disaster in its sophomore season’s second episode. Crisis looms around every corner — and everyone’s gearing up for the worst.
She's young, she's human, get used to it. Photo: Apple TV+
With Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry, the young pop star gets a showcase and a bio-doc, which means she’s gotten so hugely popular that people demanded to know more about her.
The good news is, Eilish is a humble and interesting subject. The bad news: Being a depressed teenager with high-tension demands placed upon you isn’t the easiest thing in the world.
On this week’s episode of Apple TV+’s millennial melodrama Dickinson, Austin’s drowning, Emily’s flailing, Mrs. Dickinson’s catering two tea parties, and John Brown’s raiding Harper’s Ferry. And that’s just in the first few minutes.
The future hangs in the balance. And with only two episodes left in the show’s second season, every action and word counts. The show only wastes some of them.
Alice, played by Ayelet Zurer, finally gains the upper hand this week. Photo: Apple TV+
Losing Alice starts to wind down its look at the perverse triangle formed by a screenwriter, a director and their star in the Apple TV+ psychothriller’s penultimate episode.
The time has come for Alice to direct David and Sophie in their big, erotic close-up. Can they find the chemistry needed to sell it before the wheels come off the machine and Sophie is found out?