The Morning Show, the Jennifer Aniston-Reese Witherspoon series intended as Apple TV's blockbuster inaugural event, has been treated more like a bomb in many of the early reviews. What a strange and rather lovely thing it is to watch an actor you have grown up with for two and a half decades finally come into her kingdom. Those miscalculations are often made up for by a superb cast whose performances remain grounded even when the material threatens to veer off course. The first episode immediately drops us into a pivotal day in the life of Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston), the co-host of “The Morning Show” within The Morning Show. Checking In on Netflix’s Original Movies: April 2021 Edition. Despite the naked obviousness of that desire, you know that you probably will. Review: The Morning Show Boldly Navigates the Nuances of the Me Too Era. Things get a little shakier when it comes to certain details. Clarke and Olivia Colman are in talks to either be or fight Skrulls, or both! Yet, once again, the terms of his “stepping back” are unclear. In the first three episodes, to be followed by weekly drops of each of the remaining seven installments, the accusations surrounding Mitch are never spelled out with any clarity. Season 1 Review: The Morning Show is a fine drama. More Coverage When Apple TV+’s The Morning Show premiered on November 1, it was greeted with derision, and resoundingly negative reviews. Welcome to Coffee and MTG, the morning Magic live stream show. Every episode has at least one magisterial two-hander – perhaps the best of them pairing Mitch with a similarly ostracised and baffled “good guy”, played by the great Martin Short – that manages to distil a thousand feelings and twist a thousand thoughts into a single scene. Bradley complains more than once that “The Morning Show” is too manipulative, and The Morning Show has the same problem at times. You\'ll receive the next newsletter in your inbox. (Duplass, appropriately, looks like a deer caught in the high beams at all times.) Like actual national morning news programs, The Morning Show looks polished. This is their opportunity to do so, at least until Alex starts to fight furiously back while the lies, rumours, deals, double-crossings and backstabbings multiply. This is why the show is good - you get different perspective and ideas. Apple TV+’s series is getting more brilliant by the week – and the revelatory … Apple's new series "The Morning Show" is a star-studded project featuring Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon. What people need, Ellison goes on to say, is not news, it's entertainment. The Morning Show is the most obvious example of how major it wants that impression to be. But it’s also the kind of scene that is clearly trying to get you to stand up and start slow-clapping. This in medias res approach immediately draws us into what’s happening and naturally establishes the high-stress, fast-paced environment where much of the story will unfold. As a mix of melodrama and well-written interactions that feel genuinely human, “The Morning Show” is fairly entrancing. A big issue for Alex is the fact that she’s in the middle of contract negotiations and is certain the higher-ups at UBA are trying to get rid of her because of her age. The makers of the show have repeatedly said that Carell is not playing Matt Lauer, and he certainly doesn’t appear to be trying to capture anything specific to the disgraced Today show host in his performance. The force of Bradley’s personality and her utter disregard for convention — during a job interview with Chip, she starts screaming at him and telling him his show “sucks” — is supposed to be her selling point, particularly in the eyes of Cory, who is looking to reinvent the formula of “The Morning Show.” Still, for a series that, in a lot of other ways, seems committed to capturing what it’s really like to work in this industry, the hiring of Bradley is, if not quite a bridge too far, at least a few subway stops too far outside of Manhattan. Behind the scenes, network executives have already been looking to replace her ageing presence. By. For all its flaws, “The Morning Show” does a nuanced, cogent, and absorbing job of exploring a MeToo story in its climactic first season finale. Their chemistry kept the waning show afloat – without it, she becomes even more vulnerable. Then there’s Bradley Jackson (Witherspoon), the Virginia reporter who unwittingly gets drawn into the morning-show vortex after video of her yelling at a disrespectful coal-mine protester goes viral and lands her an interview with Alex. TV Reviews All of our TV reviews in one convenient place. But the standout is Aniston, who, like Carell, fully displays the flawed, petty sides of Alex’s personality while projecting a front-facing, inviting confidence that explains why she’s so beloved to her audience. The Morning Show review – Jennifer Aniston returns in a masterwork for the #MeToo era Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carrell match the Friends star stride for stride in … Those first months of work were rapidly scrapped and the concept retooled to respond to an emerging and very different environment. It’s a great scene, the kind that makes you want to stand up and start slow-clapping. 1 year ago. UBA, not to mention everyone at Apple TV+, wants you to keep watching. But their interactions tend to spiral into uncomfortable, unexpected places. Already a subscriber? As Alex, she’s able to throw a few grenades on that image and keep us guessing about whether Alex is a true feminist or a woman who wears that label only when it suits her. A little ways into the third episode of The Morning Show, one of Apple TV+’s big plays for attention to its new streaming service, Jennifer Aniston’s morning TV anchor tries to explain to her daughter why she just did something that looks an awful lot like career suicide. Apple’s flagship series “The Morning Show,” about the fallout from sexual misconduct at a morning show, reaches operatic pitch: not quite believable yet emotionally satisfying. Alex has to lead the live broadcast alone and address the situation. Phil Berk has now been expelled from the group. Infectious vitality … Jennifer Aniston and Steve Carell in The Morning Show. As she takes her car service through the streets of Manhattan in the wee-est of wee hours, she continually ignores calls from the show’s producer, Charlie “Chip” Black (Mark Duplass). Published. It has clearly galvanised everyone involved with the show. Photo: Apple TV+. Good Morning Magic Players! Directed by Mimi Leder, it gleams on the screen. ‘The Morning Show’ Review: Apple TV+ Rises But Doesn’t Shine With Starry New Drama Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon are great in new … Plunging the audience directly into this crisis situation is one of the smartest decisions The Morning Show makes. In a coup d’etat, she installs as her new partner a scrappy regional reporter, Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon), who is experiencing 15 minutes of fame as a voice of the people after candid footage of her at a coal-mining protest went viral. “Because frankly, I’ve let you bozos handle this long enough.”. Ted Lasso, the Only Good American, Is Back for Season 2, Ilana Glazer and Zoe Lister-Jones Lead the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival Lineup. The Morning Show: Will Gompertz reviews Aniston and Witherspoon's Apple TV drama ★★☆☆☆ Will Gompertz Arts editor @WillGompertzBBC on Twitter. But as she did during her days on ER, Leder keeps things quite literally moving, pushing cameras through TV studios or following Chip and Alex around the tight corners of the UBA offices as they respond to colleagues constantly throwing informational fastballs. Clara Amfo is the new host of their flagship music show, Future Sounds. “The Morning Show,” the flagship offering of the new Apple TV Plus streaming service that arrives Friday, looks like good TV. Jennifer Aniston! Watching her and Witherspoon parry and dodge is especially fun because you so want them to get along — after all, they’re sisters in the parallel Friends universe that continues to exist in this same city! He immediately tries to recruit Jackson to join “The Morning Show” as a correspondent; through an unexpected series of developments, which I won’t spoil here, she ends up getting quickly thrust into the co-anchor chair next to Alex. The Morning Show also has interesting things to say about the changing nature of network news and journalism in a time and place when, as duplicitous network chief Cory Ellison (a shark-eyed Crudup) has it, "People get their horrible news in the palm of their hands, colored the way they like it." And … Prev Next View All . After nearly 15 years, a new Apple TV remote is on the way. Emilia Clarke Is Invading the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Log in or link your magazine subscription, Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, chummy for the cameras in, This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google, Mads Mikkelsen Takes Everything and Nothing Seriously, Tig Notaro Reflects on Being ‘Sexy AF’ in, Zoë Kravitz and Taylour Paige Are ‘A Thing,’ Whatever That Means, We’ve Been Having the Same Fights About the Oscars for 70 Years, Stephen Colbert Reacts to Derek Chauvin Verdict: ‘There Is More Work to Be Done’, “At least this one injustice was not compounded with indifference.”, Former HFPA President Called Black Lives Matter ‘Racist Hate Movement’ in Email. In a contentious meeting with her bosses in episode three, Alex makes a speech, complete with a full “this is important” zoom in for a close-up, in which she announces that in this era, the old rules no longer apply. Because of both her role on Friends and the public persona she’s developed — or, if you prefer, been saddled with by the media — Aniston has always come across as the kind of put-together woman that you wish could be your confidante. One of the weirdest critic I saw was that the show is left wing propaganda. Dakota Johnson to Star in ‘Modern, Witty’ Adaptation of Jane Austen’s. Season 1 Review: The Morning Show is high-voltage drama and big-time entertainment, a savage, scorching portrait of the TV news industry as a modern court of the Medicis where corporate genocide is coffee-break sport, where subordinates exist to be crushed and superiors to be sabotaged. Beyond The Trailer's reaction & review Episode 1, 2 & 3 for Apple TV! on. The Morning Show is more comfortable in black-and-white than shades of gray, but Crudup's Cory is the one male figure I found gross, but interestingly gross. All screenings will be held outdoors and scattered around the city. The Morning Show: TV so excellent it will make you totally resent Friends. And it has a correspondingly urgent feel, a sense of scripts forged in a white heat, the odd clunky moment more than compensated for by the show’s infectious vitality. hat a strange and rather lovely thing it is to watch an actor you have grown up with for two and a half decades finally come into her kingdom. “The Morning Show” may be moving toward a place where Mitch is something other than uninterestingly aggrieved, and it may complicate the so-far static frenemyship of … There’s a strong sense of momentum and controlled chaos in The Morning Show that engages from the jump. Rob Roth confirmed he praised the allegedly abusive producer and called Karen Olivo a “horrible woman.”, Scott Rudin Also ‘Stepping Back’ From Film Projects Over Abuse Allegations. When she finally arrives at the offices of UBA, the network that employs her, a panicky Chip is standing in front of the building, greeting her with the news that Mitch Kessler (Carell), Alex’s on-air partner of 15 years, has been fired for engaging in sexual misconduct with members of the staff. The Morning Show couldn’t come a more appropriate moment, and it’s not a coincidence. That being said, bear in mind the following: Mitch gets fired for sexual misconduct, then adamantly contends that he’s the one being mistreated; his younger, model-esque wife leaves him; and it’s revealed that he had a button under his desk that automatically locked and closed his dressing room door. The Morning Show: Alle Reviews. The role of Bradley, an ambitious, outspoken firebrand, is about as Witherspoonian as it gets, and the actress tears into it with her usual twangy spirit. The initial development began before the New York Times published its first article about what would become proliferating allegations against Harvey Weinstein. © 2021 Vox Media, LLC. But it’s strongly implied that the women calling him out have different stories to tell, yet we don’t get to hear exactly what they entail. So it is with, Commenting has been disabled at this time but you can still. Bradley’s politics and personality have cost her plenty of jobs—making her both an unlikely Morning Show hire and an ideal foil for Alex, whose poised veneer … She plays Alex Levy, the co-anchor of a morning talk show whose life is thrown into disarray when her co-presenter Mitch (Steve Carrell, proving alongside Aniston that if you can do comedy you can do anything) is accused of sexual misconduct and fired. The rest of the cast, which includes, among others, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Nestor Carbonell, Karen Pittman, who played one of Elizabeth’s key sources on The Americans, and Bel Powley of Diary of a Teenage Girl, is really strong, too. It’s always like, “Here’s your cola, Master Mads,” or “Get your fucking Coke, and get out of my shop.” There’s no neutral Coca-Cola anymore. Based on the first three episodes, it is also a well-executed work of television that never lets you forget you’re watching a work of television. Well this is on the opposite a very balanced show, that gives a voice to the men perspective on MeToo and criticises it very harshly while the main hero is a moderate conservative. The script has depth and endless torque and the whole thing is an exhilarating rush that makes room for nuance, thought and – though it’s definitely a drama – humour. (She is not wrong.) As the first foray by new streaming service Apple TV+, it is all the more impressive that there isn’t a weak link in The Morning Show. It is a serious show that, in every frame and every performance, announces that it wants to be taken seriously. Apple wants to make a major impression with the launch of its new streaming service, Apple TV+. There may be a narrative reason for withholding the bare facts, but with only this first trio of episodes to start with, the decision to keep them under wraps makes things murky in a way that doesn’t feel purposeful. But everything is rendered fresh and new by the reckoning with the #MeToo era. The Morning Show Review today! While these events are played as surprising and unprecedented, it’s still hard to imagine any circumstance in which a news show this high-profile and under this much duress would stick someone untested and with zero hosting experience into Mitch’s former position. The Morning Show. Everyone else – especially Billy Crudup as the network suit playing seven-dimensional chess with everyone – matches her point for point. Hier findet Ihr sämtliche Kritiken, die wir bislang zu der Serie «The Morning Show» verfasst haben. In der Serienadaption des Brian-Stelter-Romans „ Top of the Morning “, The Morning Show, geht es um die Menschen, die Amerika morgens beim Aufstehen unterhalten und mit Informationen … It's also the highest-profile show debuting Friday on … They keep each other on their toes, and those of us watching, too. Watch James Corden’s European Super League Rant Even If Soccer Bores You, “They took something so pure and so beautiful and they beat the love and the joy out of it, and they did it for money.”. Can Listening to Music Ever Really Be Sustainable? Carell is put in the unfortunate position in the first three episodes of having to yell and seem anguished almost constantly, for understandable reasons, but he finds a way to instantly convey how entitled Mitch is as well as how likable he must have seemed to the public. The ultimate guide to experiencing the high. Aniston is flawless – wholly convincing as a woman both broken by and rightfully raging at Mitch’s betrayal, a force to be reckoned with and a person who has had it up to here with a lifetime of negotiating other people’s whims, needs and prejudices. Niv M. Sultan. “The Morning Show” is Aniston at her most fiery: dropping f-bombs, demanding respect and, as Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) would say, reclaiming her time. So it is with Jennifer Aniston who, 25 years after she arrived on our screens in Friends, returns in a TV series for the first time since the hit show ended in 2004. Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carrell match the Friends star stride for stride in this funny, fearless drama from Apple TV+, Last modified on Fri 1 Nov 2019 09.45 EDT. The Morning Show is the most obvious example of how major it wants that impression to be. This glossy, largely compelling new series possesses major star power — Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, and Steve Carell portray its central figures — and a penchant for leaning as hard as it can into moments of high-stakes drama. All rights reserved. The Peacock comedy tackles heavy topics like Indigenous erasure and revisionist history with the light touch expected of a Mike Schur co-production. Published 2 … The chemistry between the two is interesting enough to capture the attention of Cory Ellison (Billy Crudup, at his most charming and blatantly untrustworthy), the former head of UBA’s entertainment division who is now in charge of news. Korean drama, French films, and Idris Elba. The series is an uneasy, sometimes nauseating, and often fascinating examination of our current moment. October 28, 2019. The direction by Mimi Leder, who, in addition to directing several episodes, helped establish the tone and aesthetic of the series, also goes a long way toward achieving that. The review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 61% approval rating, based on 104 reviews, with an average rating of 5.78/10. Developed by showrunner Kerry Ehrin and inspired by the book Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV by Brian Stelter, The Morning Show is more than just a behind-the-cameras look at how morning television operates. Like ageing anchors and not-good guys, established streaming services will no doubt be looking over their shoulders now, and worrying a little more every day. While watching his public shaming unfold from his palatial home outside the city, an incensed Mitch insists that all of his encounters with women have been consensual. And she only has a couple of hours to figure out what to say. — or you have somehow never heard of Matt Lauer. Facebook Bursts Into the Live Audio Scene, The Stoner Canon: 101 Trippy Movies, Albums, Books, TV Shows, and More. Inevitably, there are echoes of Network and Broadcast News in the setting, and in the grappling with the porous borders between news and entertainment, fact and fiction, opinion and propaganda. More specifically, it’s about the #MeToo movement and what happens when a sexual-misconduct scandal rips apart the most successful infotainment program on network TV, one that happens to closely resemble the Today show. ‘The Morning Show’ Review: Jennifer Aniston Can’t Save Apple’s Rudderless and Dull Debut Drama. Apple TV+. The hypocrisy of them trying to save face in the middle of a #MeToo controversy while simultaneously preparing to throw their best-known female face under a bus is not lost on her. “I think it may be one small place where we could really fundamentally ask: What do we want to sustain in the first place?”, Annie Mac to Exit BBC Radio One After 17 Years. The Morning Show is a slick, sophisticated venture stuffed with powerhouse performances – Aniston’s foremost among them. “We are doing this my way,” she says, looking down a conference-room table where most of the seats are occupied by white men. The Morning Show is not that. The #MeToo movement was a long time coming, but when it crashed the waves were tidal and they came in fast. *Sorry, there was a problem signing you up. You need to break the mold and give us a TV show we didn’t even know we needed but cannot live without. But when launching a streaming platform you expect people to pay for, you need more than fine. Advertisement. If you can absorb all that and not be reminded of Matt Lauer, then either you were just born five minutes ago — in which case, welcome to the world! But like Bradley, once you get drawn into the center of all this swirling activity, you wind up wanting to stay. The Morning Show review - the flagship of the Apple TV+ launch feels uncomfortable in its own skin 3.