Apple TV
There have been a lot of complaints lately about the quality of entertainment in my feeds. People often complain that there’s not enough original content, or too many superhero stories for instance. One thing I’ve noticed, the people complaining seem to be missing that there is so much out there that isn’t these things, and most of those people don’t seem to have one of the best sources of original and interesting storytelling right now: Apple TV.
It does seem like there are too many streamers to keep track of. In an ideal world this would mean lots of competition and more and more great shows being produced. The flip side of that being the toxic side of our current reality where publicly traded companies are more concerned with appeasing horrid elements of their shareholders than with making a good product (example: the cancellations tax shenanigans at MAX). For all the streamers there are right now, I think that if I had to pick just one streamer to hold onto right now, in this moment, it would be Apple TV.
Sure, I’m probably going to hold onto others. If I cancelled Netflix I’d only be resubscribing the moment Dead Boy Detectives, season 2 of Sandman, and of course Stranger Things episodes are dropping. And Disney+ has all the Marvel and Star Wars stuff and at least so far hasn’t started egregiously pulling stuff off the site for shenanigans purposes. But in this moment I really feel like Apple TV is offering the best new shows and seem to be getting better.
Slow Horses is the best espionage show since The Sandbaggers. Between Slow Horses and the ability to watch Ted Lasso over and over again (a show that has taken on semi religious importance to me), would in themselves make Apple one of the better streamers. There’s also Shrinking, which is a good below the radar series (also there’s a shortage of shows with ~30 minute runtimes, everything seems to be an hour or more.)
But it’s the sci-fi that is setting Apple TV apart right now. For All Mankind is an alternate history sci-fi show that is amazing and thought provoking. Constellation just started, but with its mix of quantum mechanics and mystery is again incredibly thought provoking and interesting and definitely not the expected norm. I have not yet seen Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, but I’ve heard good things. Foundation initially lost me, but I hear that it gets better, and I think it’s important in that it was different and wasn’t just playing it safe. In these four shows there is very different style and subgenre of storytelling and they are all well executed.
There is also more coming. Much like Foundation when I first heard that The Three Body Problem was being adapted for television, I wondered “how?” I will definitely watch, if only to answer my question. Neuromancer is also being adapted, which I’m looking forward to, but again I have questions. Neuromancer was hugely influential on me, and much of the science fiction world, but I’m wondering how it will play on an audience that live in the now. It’s opening line, one of the best I thought at the time, “The sky above the port was the color of a television tuned to a dead channel.” Brilliant… for someone of my age or older. Someone younger would be likely to have questions, like what’s a tv channel, let alone a dead one? But that may be interesting. Retro futurism might just be the next thing. Like For All Mankind maybe the thing to do is to go back to these visions of the future we once had and see if we can’t correct our path.
I feel like Apple TV is becoming more and more what HBO or Netflix were at their heights. Here’s hoping they don’t start making their decisions based on what financial news networks think stockholders want instead of what’s the best programming.
