Introduction
Tech companies. They make the things that we humans use so often that some of us actually hate them – but we still use them anyway, although that’s an article for another time. Tech companies make all sorts of things, from phones, computers, phone computer tablet things, fridges and other appliances, but Apple is different. They don’t make fridges – they make TV shows. They don’t just make any old TV shows though, some of the best shows on TV right now have come straight from Apple TV (formerly Apple TV+, not really sure why that was a necessary change in the first place). This article will be an appreciation of the insane run that Apple TV went on in the year 2025 A.D.
The Studio
Hollywood loves to indulge in itself. There is possibly no other TV show that illustrates this better than The Studio, by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (Superbad, This Is The End). This show is absolutely full of cameos and fan-service to cinephiles everywhere, with some of the best cameos being Adam Scott (Parks and Recreation, Severance), Antony Starr (The Boys), Charli d’Amelio (TikTok), and Martin Scorsese (Almost every mob flick from the past century). It’s not the most inventive concept: at its core, this show is about a bumbling studio exec and his day to day life as the head of the fictional Continental Studio. However, Rogen and Goldberg manage to put their own spin on every episode, putting the leads in situations like locating a lost reel of film, trying to figure out whether they accidentally made a racist cast for a movie, and getting Martin Scorsese to direct a film about Kool-Aid.
It’s also greatly impressive from a technical aspect. Almost all of the scenes are shot in takes that are never shorter than about 30 seconds of continuous handheld camera. The most prominent example of this is the second episode, “The Oner”, which chronicles attempts to shoot a 2-minute scene in a film while the episode is a oner itself. This means that the whole 27 minutes of it is one continuous take. When asked about the choice to do this, Seth Rogen had this to say:
“We were like, [the use of the oner] is actually gonna capture the panic and the mania, the compressed nature of the timelines and the stories, which a lot of the episodes have.”
The script for this episode was a total of 40 pages long, with 10 pages being rehearsed for 7 hours and shot for 1 hour and 30 minutes every day for a total of four days. When asked about what it was like shooting the episode, Seth Rogen stated:
“I thought it was going to be too dark. The take we used, I think, was the very last time we did it. And it actually ended up working perfectly.”
The show wouldn’t be as good without the quality of the performances though. Seth Rogen leads as Matt Remick, a nervous guy who absolutely needs to be liked by everyone, from co-workers to celebrities. His co-stars include Ike Barinholtz (Disaster Movie), Kathryn Hahn (Knives Out 2), and Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad). This show actually resulted in Rogen winning his very first Emmy award. In fact, The Studio pretty much dominated in terms of awards last year.
The Emmys
If you’re not familiar with the Emmys, they’re essentially the Academy Awards but for TV. Much like the Academy Awards, they’re a really prestigious thing to receive, with only the best of the best being nominated each year. Every year, there’s normally a show that wins a few more awards than all the others, think The Bear in 2023, but last year, The Studio won a lot more awards than all the others. It even broke the record for the most awarded comedy show ever, set by The Bear. Seth Rogen was awarded two Emmys for himself, one for lead acting, and one for directing the episode The Oner. However, the show as a whole won 13, after being nominated for 23 in total.
That’s not to say that The Studio was the only good show at the Emmys last year. In fact, it wasn’t even the most nominated show. After 7 Emmy nominations and not a single win in 2022, Ben Stiller and Dan Erickson had been working on the sophomore season of their thriller show Severance, starring Adam Scott, which ended up getting a whopping 27 nominations, of which it won 8.
Severance
What if you didn’t have to go to work? That’s called unemployment. What if you were able to split your consciousness into your work self while you’re at work, and your regular self when you aren’t? That’s the question that Dan Erickson sought to answer when he came up with the idea in 2015, with it being picked up by Ben Stiller and then greenlit for production in 2022. The backstory for the show is quite depressing though, as it was based on Dan Erickson’s discontent for his dull office jobs, making him wish he could just skip through the whole thing.
The show is led by Adam Scott (who coincidentally has a cameo in The Studio) as depressed man Mark Scout in life, and devoted Lumon Industries employee Mark S at work. Scott does an incredible job of differentiating between his two characters, with each one having his own body mannerisms, style, and way of speaking. For every severed character though, Severance works as an impressive character study and example on how to effectively portray two characters. The supporting cast also includes Britt Lower as a disgruntled new hire, Zach Cherry as a foul-mouthed colleague, John Turturro as an innocent severed employee.
Much like most of the shows featured in this article, Severance is one of those shows that just gets better and better the more you watch it. In cases like The Studio, shows can get better simply because of improvements in writing, but in shows like Severance and the to-be-mentioned Pluribus, they get more entertaining and intriguing as you learn more about the mysterious worldbuilding of the show.
Platonic
In the interest of self-disclosure, I’ll say that at the time of writing, I haven’t watched Platonic’s second season yet, but Platonic is honestly one of the less good shows in this article. That certainly isn’t to say that it’s a bad show, it’s a decently fun cringe comedy sitcom with great performances by Rose Byrne (Two Hands) and Seth Rogen, but it’s just dwarfed by the likes of The Studio and Severance. I think that this is because both of those shows have things that make them unique respectively. The Studio has its technical aspects, and Severance has its outlandishly creative concept. Not that those are the only things that make them great, but their concepts on their own are not grounded in reality, and are therefore vastly different from real life.
Platonic features Byrne and Rogen as two platonic best friends named Sylvia, a mother of 3, and Will, the brewmaster of a bar. The show (from what I’ve seen) sees them going about their daily lives, with the odd cringe occurrence every now and again that makes it a little hard to watch but even more fun (The Studio uses this same tactic).
Pluribus
Note: At time of writing, only a few episodes of Pluribus have aired, thus this segment is not fully informed.
When you hear the name Vince Gilligan, you either think “I don’t know who that is”, or you think “he made Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul”. After his success with the Breaking Bad universe, Gilligan decided that he didn’t want to write anti-heroes anymore. He chose to express this through his new show, featuring Rhea Seehorn as just a
flawed hero. It’s a science fiction show in a very loose sense of the term. The kind of sense in which something science-fiction related happens at the beginning, and the rest of the show covers the characters navigating their new surroundings.
The marketing for the show was incredibly ambiguous, with the tagline reading just “Happiness is contagious”, which leaves a very wide array of possibilities as to what the show could be about. It chronicles the journey of depressed fantasy author Carol being
immune to a global virus which makes those infected with it relentlessly optimistic. This premise offers a very interesting dynamic between the flawed hero and her surroundings, begging the question: “What would a discontent person do if they were consistently surrounded by contentness?”
Conclusion
In conclusion, Apple makes good phones, but they also make good TV. This is reflected in the critical response to their shows, as all of these shows have a Rotten Tomatoes score between 90% and 100%. If I were to rank these shows in my personal opinion, the ranking would go like this:
1. Severance
2. The Studio
3. Pluribus
4. Platonic
Again, not to suggest that any of these are bad. If you’re looking for something to watch, try out one of these shows and see what you think. My word isn’t law, however I can confidently state that there is something to love in all of these shows.
