Review — The Morning Show, season one
By: John Sherrod
Tags: Apple, TV Series, TV, Review, TV Shows

Review — The Morning Show, season one

The Morning Show was among the first titles available on Apple TV+ when it launched last November, and it’s pretty clear that Apple saw it as the crown jewel in the initial offering. It’s loaded with big stars including Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Steve Carell, Billy Crudup, and more. It’s a glitzy, expensive-looking drama about the inner world of morning news at a major TV network, and it’s clearly an attempt at giving Apple TV+ its House Of Cards equivalent.

In the series, Anniston’s Alex Levy and Carell’s Mitch Kessler have been long-time co-anchors of the biggest morning news program, the titular The Morning Show (also frequently referred to in the show as “TMS”). The show begins with Kessler’s dismissal for sexual improprieties in the workplace. Levy immediately takes advantage of the situation to try to leverage more control over the program, including choosing who gets to replace Mitch as her co-anchor, but she’s getting pushback from the network. In a moment of desperation, she publicly announces that Bradley Jackson (Witherspoon) will be her new co-anchor, which unbeknownst to her is exactly the situation that news division head Cory Ellison (Crudup) has been trying to engineer all along. From there the show deals with the (at times) strained relationship between Jackson and Levy, the personal dramas of other members of the TMS staff, and Kessler’s desperation to fight back against what he sees as an agenda-driven depiction of him as a monster.

Obviously the key themes in the show were inspired by the #metoo moment that highlighted so many situations of sexual harassment and worse by powerful men the entertainment industry, with Matt Lauer’s fall into disgrace at the Today Show being a specific key inspiration. It also deals with how people deal with threats to their station in life, what they’re willing to do to get what they want, and the consequences that sometimes go along with that.

In general I thought the show was great, but there were times when it veered heavily toward the soap opera end of the TV drama spectrum, something I think House Of Cards avoided. I also kept feeling like I was watching a full season-long backstory to a Murder, She Wrote episode. I love Murder, She Wrote, so that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but for some reason the show often felt very 1980’s, despite the R-rated language and contemporary themes.

Storywise, my biggest complaint is that I don’t think the writers did a good enough job conceiving of and developing the character of Bradley Jackson. One of my biggest story gripes is when a show or movie tells you something about a character but never shows it. The Morning Show tells us multiple times that Jackson is a conservative. One character even describes her as “more of a libertarian.” But the show never demonstrates that there’s anything conservative about her. She confesses on air to a past abortion and seems non-repententant about that decision. In general her character feels more like a progressive idealization of a truth-telling journalistic crusader surrounded by other people who are phoneys. The storyline of her relationship with Levy also felt a little underdeveloped.

One of my favorite characters was that of TMS’s executive producer Chip Black, played by Mark Duplass. He frequently felt very relatable as a character in the center of several concurrent awful situations who has to try to manage the chaos surrounded by people who are constantly threatening his job. My other favorite character was Crudup’s Ellison, who was often cartoonishly eccentric, but got laughs in an organic way that didn’t detract from the seriousness of the drama.

The cinematography is great in the series. You’ll enjoy the visuals of this a lot, particularly in 4K HDR. And the music is fantastic as well, starting with the theme song, Benjamin Clementine’s “Nemesis.” I love Cab Calloway, and Clementine’s performance mirrors a lot of Calloway’s staccato vocals, so much so that I had to look it up to see if maybe it was a Cab Calloway song originally. (It’s not.) The rest of the show’s soundtrack is really great as well, both in their choices of popular music tracks, but also the music written for The Morning Show’s score.

The Morning Show is not as good as House Of Cards, but then again House Of Cards was exceptionally good up until Kevin Spacey’s own #metoo indiscretions caught up with him and the show was forced to end with a season in which his absence was a major detriment. But The Morning Show is a solid example of the type of well-crafted series Apple TV+ is aiming for, led by big stars and backed by talented creatives. I’m honestly not sure where they can take season two. I fear we might be in a Jessica Jones scenario where there’s no way to top the first season so the show goes in a totally different direction, but I’m at least interested in seeing what they come up with.