The streaming wars are at full throat these days, with the pluses officially available for viewers to parse their content. But while Disney+ has gotten rave reviews for its huge catalog of Disney, Marvel and Star Wars movies as well as positive reviews of The Mandalorian, Apple’s service has had a less stellar start.
Apple TV+ launched with nine original series, many of which got less-than-ideal reviews. And its biggest product, a star-studded drama called The Morning Show, got decidedly mixed reviews. But those that worked on the show, starring Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carrell, say the critics wanted to target Apple more than the show itself.
The Morning Show executive producers Kerry Ehrin and Mimi Leder spoke at Code Media in Los Angeles and said reviews of the show “felt like an attack on Apple” more than a fair assessment of the TV show itself. According to Julia Alexander of The Verge, Leder felt like critics are “nuts.”
“When those reviews came in, I didn’t know what show they were watching,” Leder said during a talk at Code Media in Los Angeles. “I thought they were nuts. I thought there were a lot of Apple haters who just wanted Apple to fail. The reviews felt like an attack on Apple.”
Both Leder and Ehrin felt like critics were reviewing Apple TV Plus as a service, and looping in The Morning Show with those critiques.
It’s a significant criticism of critics to say they were trying to be mean to Apple more than actually evaluating the show, but the quality and value of the streaming service is, indeed, hard to separate from a fair review of what The Morning Show is given how big a draw the show was supposed to be. Our own Brian Grubb noted that in his own review of The Morning Show that it’s important to consider both the quality of the show itself and the product it is being sold as in a monthly Apple TV+ subscription.
But that’s something built into every streaming platform’s properties, though, and it’s a factor that The Mandalorian dealt with, too. Those reviews seem to be more positive, though, so perhaps critics are less mad at Disney.
