Apple TV+ Review
By Jerrison Oracion, Senior Columnist
Apple has historically made products that—with their intuitive designs—encourage creativity. Two weeks ago, they launched their new streaming service, Apple TV+— beginning the streaming services wars. There was a lot of hype for the streaming service after an Apple announcement last summer. It was revealed that the service will be $5.99 per month in Canada, making them cheaper than Netflix.
Surprisingly, I found out that if you have an Apple Music student subscription, Apple TV+ is included with it. While they said that it will be available on all platforms, it is currently only available through a few ways—the Apple TV app and through their website on PC.
Only original Apple shows are available on the platform and that’s a big downside. That might be the reason why the website looks simple. It has a great design, but they put all the shows on one page—and if you like a specific show, you have to scroll down all the way down to it. Also, there is no list section on the website—though there may be a more full interface available on the mobile version through the Apple TV app.
At launch, they released a few shows intended to be ongoing, including Oprah’s Book Club and the Sesame Street spinoff, Helpsters. The unusual thing about their shows is that the number of episodes in a season is very small. For example, I thought that The Morning Show would have 10 episodes at launch, but it only had three episodes at that point. This was in line with their statement that some of their shows will follow the Netflix approach of releasing the entire season, and some will do their new approach—they will initially release three episodes, and then once a week afterwards.
I watched three of the shows: The Morning Show, Dickinson, and Snoopy in Space. The Morning Show involves a morning show working on damage control due to one of the hosts of the show, Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell), being removed from the show because of sexual misconduct claims. His co-host, Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston), tries to maintain the show’s reputation. When a reporter named Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon) goes viral and is interviewed on the show, a game changing moment happens.
The end of the first episode sets the stage clearly for what will happen in the rest of the season, and also shows that only decent person in the show is Bradley.
Dickinson tells the untold story of famous poet Emily Dickinson, with a focus on the revelation that she liked women. It looks like a teen drama in a historical period, and Hailee Steinfeld is great at portraying Emily Dickinson. If you’d like to see a funnier depiction of Emily Dickinson, watch the Molly Shannon film Wild Nights with Emily.
Snoopy in Space is very fun and educational. Because it has four episodes with each episode is eight minutes long, it is a special I watched in its entirety. In it, Snoopy tries to pursue his dream of going to space with the help of the Peanuts gang. It is very informative about space, has the classic humour that you would expect from Peanuts.
Apple TV+ has legitimately enjoyable shows that could be the rival of channels, and they have more big shows to offer to come.
