Severance recap: Lumon employees go on a revealing field trip this week. Photo: Apple TV+
New Apple TV+ thriller/comedy Severance takes a visit to a motivational museum this week. Actors Adam Scott, Britt Lower, Patricia Arquette, John Turturro and Yul Vasquez continue to do amazing work with their offbeat characters in this satirical study of the depressing nature of punching the clock.
Severance’s unique look and science fiction premise continue to pay dividends rich enough to get over some of the hurdles the show occasionally throws at the rational part of your brain.
Leanne (played by Nell Tiger Free) lets loose in this week's unnerving and surprisingly funny episode. Photo: Apple TV+
The Turners throw a truly miserable dinner party on this week’s Servant, the Apple TV+ show about demonic forces assailing the residents of a Philadelphia brownstone.
Leanne makes it her business to embarrass Sean’s guest, Dorothy spies something she shouldn’t, and sober Julian just drinks it all in.
The funniest and most daringly tense episode of the show — powered by Servant creator Tony Basgallop, showrunner M. Night Shyamalan and a host of incredible writers and directors — takes no prisoners. It also gives Nell Tiger Free some of the best comic work she’s done on the show to date.
Detective Danner (played by Tiffany Haddish) reports for duty in a dreadful flashback episode. Photo: Apple TV+
Apple TV+’s The Afterparty, the show with a kaleidoscopic approach to genre, hits a new low this week as it becomes a dreadful procedural for its penultimate episode. The show has been many things by now — an unfunny cartoon, a musical, an action movie, an arthouse experiment — but it’s never fully just given into being bad television on purpose before now.
There’s something frankly a little insulting about being asked to watch a half-hearted impression of something The Afterparty creator Christopher Miller and the show’s writers keep telling us is bad and a waste of time and unrealistic. I’d much rather just watch a rerun of JAG on Pluto TV than continue with this baleful re-creation.
What, for heaven’s sakes, is the point of The Afterparty?
Natalie (played by Georgina Campbell) goes sideways this week on Suspicion. Photo: Apple TV+
Apple TV+’s Suspicion has gathered its suspects together and now they have to decide who’s who — and more to the point, who’s guilty.
It’s a Ten Little Indians riff this week as everyone accuses everyone of being more guilty than they are. The suspects are going to have to come as clean as they can if they want to make it out of this bottle episode alive.
Rob Williams and his writers have crafted a nifty detour for these characters as they work together to figure out who’s put them in the spotlight and why. The nation is starting to think they’re heroes, but they might kill each other before any new evidence comes to light and they can prove their innocence.
Leanne gets to have a little fun this week on Servant. But not too much. Photo: Apple TV+
Servant heads off to the carnival this week as Apple TV+’s show about the madness lurking near a Philadelphia brownstone nudges crisis ever nearer to nanny Leanne and the Turners.
Writer/creator Tony Basgallop and director/producer M. Night Shyamalan prove once again they have a real eye for talent as this week’s hired guns do incredible work building an unyielding atmosphere of discomfort and discovery.
Leanne is finally ready to let her guard down, and the people watching her seem to know it, but who’s watching who, exactly? There’s still an open question about allegiances — and it’s about to get more complicated. There will be blood … and funnel cake.
Aadesh and Eddie think maybe they can find the real kidnappers. Photo: Apple TV+
The kidnapping of Leo Newman remains unsolved in this week’s episode of Apple TV+ thriller Suspicion, as a new suspect enters the game and the stakes jump into the rafters for all concerned. No one is ever going back to their old lives after this.
The original three suspects are taking stock of the damage done to their personal existences when in walks new patsy Eddie and Sean, the psychopath who looks to be out to get away with kidnapping and murder.
It’s been standard-issue mistaken identity so far. But what happens when the body count starts climbing? When the suspects increase without any rhyme or reason? This week’s mostly very solid episode of Suspicion starts asking harder questions — and giving more dispiriting answers.
CODA will show for free in theaters from Friday, February 25 through 27. Photo: Apple TV+
In celebration of CODA‘s Oscar nomination for Best Picture, Apple TV+ said Friday it will celebrate by re-releasing the indie hit in theaters next weekend. And you’ll be able to watch it for free.
You can see the film for free in theaters from Friday, February 25 to Sunday, February 27.
What's going on here? Whatever it is, it isn't amusing. Photo: Apple TV+
This week on Apple TV+ show The Afterparty, we hear from the final suspect who attended the reunion that ended with pop star Xavier’s murder. So, if you’ve loved hearing about these events over and over — congratulations! You’re getting them one more time, this time delivered in the form of an unremarkable animated TV show.
Newly single mom Zoë takes Detective Danner through her version of the events that took place that deadly night. Naturally, she makes plenty of detours to talk about her life as a mom and a divorcee, and how hard all of this has been for her.
Her story would prove more compelling if these points hadn’t already been made in the previous five episodes of this dreadful show. It only took half of this short season for The Afterparty to run out of steam. All in all, it’s a pitiful display from comedy performers who should know better.
The new documentary offers a fresh look at the Great Emancipator. Photo: Apple TV+
New Apple TV+ docu-series Lincoln’s Dilemma delivers a fine history lesson in classical PBS form. The four-part series, which premieres today, brings you the story of Lincoln’s presidency and the ways in which he approached the issue of slavery, from his first dealings with the issue until his death at the hands of a Confederate sympathizer.
Stewarded by executive producer/directors Jacqueline Olive and Barak Goodman, executive producer Jelani Cobb and a host of historians and activists, the series’ form is likely too sturdy and utilitarian to change the way anyone views Lincoln.
However, the filmmakers’ intent is admirable. They set out to neither oversell nor undersell Lincoln and his views on slavery, how history has sought to simplify the political figures of the 1860s, and how the Great Emancipator was and was not an adequate moniker for the 16th president of the United States.