This week I am recommending two shows from Apple TV+ that I think exemplify that streaming service’s mission statement, or at least what I imagine its mission statement to be. To my mind, it is something like “Take big swings and market them like they’re safe bets.” I often go into one of their shows thinking I know what I am about to get, whether it is a true crime drama like Blackbird or a murder mystery show like The Afterparty. Those shows read as safe from the outside, fitting neatly into existing boxes. But I often find that the show is either way better than it needs to be at realizing the type of show I was expecting (Blackbird) or uses different and creative ways to present a familiar story (The Afterparty). Too much of television today is just people talking to each other, utilizing the same types of shots, the same stock music, and the same safe casting. Apple manages to pull a bait and switch on us with a lot of their shows, dangling something we expect and then delivering so much more.
It is perhaps not unexpected that their safest show, Ted Lasso, has garnered the biggest general audience and the most critical plaudits, but they have been attracting attention for their weirder bets too (Severance), and that’s where I want focus my attention this week. Because big swings are worth taking even if they don’t always hit it out of the park, to continue the metaphor, I am going to recommend one big swing that works beautifully and one that doesn’t quite make it.
Servant: M. Knight Shyamalan has a reputation for making some very bad horror movies. This reputation has become something of a meme; when I saw the trailer in theaters for his upcoming movie Knock at the Cabin people were interested until the end when his name flashed on the screen. There was a collective groan. This reputation is not unearned, but I would posit it is probably significantly overblown. What seems to be the case is that he puts out some middling fright fests, makes his money, and then pours his serious creative energy into the projects he really cares about. He may be mercenary, but I’ve never believed he was incapable of making something truly great. Servant is that thing.
Servant is about a couple, Sean and Dorothy Turner, who hire a young woman named Leanne to take care of their baby son. I will refrain from disclosing any other plot points, as their revelation is key to the experience of the show. But what I can tell you is Shyamalan plays a symphony of unease in this series. He plays on our fears of babies, strangers, young women’s sexuality, madness, dolls, and molecular gastronomy. His use of unusual camera angles is a subtle stroke of genius. You never feel like you have your feet quite on the ground, especially when you are looking head-on at the characters because they’re never quite at the angle or perspective you expect. The series continues the creepy but delicious food tradition (Sean is a chef) inaugurated by Hannibal, where the cuisine looks so exquisite and yet so alien you don’t know whether to salivate or recoil. It is also a deep meditation on the potential horrors of motherhood.
The series is head and shoulders better than it needed to be. Shyamalan knows how to phone it in but he also knows how to blow us away. Casting Rupert Grint as Sean’s alcoholic dirtbag brother is another stroke of genius; as we look into a familiar childhood face and see a grizzled and dangerous asshole, we feel the ground underneath our feet shift again.
A major content warning, though: this show is not for the faint of heart. The content and imagery is psychologically disturbing and at times horrifying, especially as it concerns children. Do not watch if you don’t have a strong stomach for psychological horror. If you can ride that rollercoaster, the experience is well worth it.
Foundation: Based on a series by Isaac Asimov that has long been considered so complex as to be unfilmable, Foundation is a big swing I don’t think has been quite successful yet. The timespan in the novels is over a thousand years, meaning characters may only have a brief window in which to interest us and settings change so rapidly we have trouble with world building. The novels are considered some of science fiction’s best pieces, winning both Hugo and Nebula awards. For all their unfilmability, Apple did not shy away from trying. The series has a huge budget, great actors (Lee Pace and Jared Harris in particular) and seemingly unlimited creative minds in the visual effects department. It is a aesthetically stunning series that tries very hard to realize some extremely challenging source material. It has received fairly positive reviews for its efforts and was renewed for a second season, so there is time and space for it to continue its work. But it doesn’t ever quite gel for me, particularly in some of its less-realized plots and characters. It is just so vast, both in scope and time, that many elements are sketched out when they should be fully flesh and blood.
But I am recommending it this week because it has so much potential and it is such a valiant attempt to adapt truly great source material. Source material with this many characters, timelines, settings, and plot points is particularly suited to our moment in television. A long-form series on a major streaming service has the space and the financial backing to take its time and with that second season renewal, I look forward to seeing how they use those resources. In an age of easy reboots and endlessly iterated IP, Foundation has the potential to be something epic and new, so well done Apple for taking it on. Watch if you love old-school sci-fi, Lee Pace’s return to acting, and massively complex fictional worlds.