Since the streaming wars began, each service took on their own flavour.
HBO - generally decent, prestige television, but has less “content” than other services
Netflix - Quantity over Quality, you get gems sometimes, but also a lot of junk to sort through
Disney+ - A lot of good legacy content and very hit and miss with marvel/disney IPs, fans are willing to complain/ hate watch
So here’s the thing with Apple TV, I didn’t subscribe to it, I bought an apple product and got 3 months free, and the discourse is either love it or just silence. No one seems to ‘hate’ the shows.
The Good - Ted Lasso, Severance were the ones I really enjoyed, Ted Lasso felt genuine, especially with the British sensibilities and I will compare this to Shrinking later, Severance was good and hopefully doesn’t have the mystery box problems
The Mid - Shrinking is from Bill Lawrence who created one of my favourite shows Scrubs, but it’s just super boring, I finished Netflix’s Man on the Inside in a single sitting but couldnt continue Shrinking, compared to Ted Lasso, it also feels fake nice, fake chill.
The Ugly - Foundation is probably one of the worst written sci fi on television now. People hated on ST: Picard very vocally and for Foundation I only found a couple of youtube videos on how bad S1 is.
It’s bad in a way that is not really related to the books, but having the name makes it slightly worse. The writing is basically equivalent to one of the bad Doctor Who episodes but with 10x the budget. You get occasional bursts of brilliance which basically comes out of Asimov’s ideas. However, its extremely hard to point this out and TV fans will defend this, this is not the case with SW shows on Disney plus where people understand the difference between fan service and bad writing. It’s pretty hard to find an opinion on Apple TV shows that says “It’s OK, I didn’t like it” which happens so frequently on Netflix.
I’m not sure why thats the reason, just my observation and wondering if you guys have any opinions on this phenomenon
The problem of a minimalism based image is that there isn’t any personality left to project. Apple got into streaming without a clue of what to do with it. It’s not their field. Media requires expression and spectacle. Apple’s minimalism, although it does express some things, it is not suited for high energy entertainment. So most of Apple’s original shows are very low energy and dozy.
They also have drilled the walled garden, the golden cage, the expensive exclusivity for almost three decades of alienating marketing as well. It means that people assume they aren’t allowed to even see what’s available on Apple streaming unless they are already part of the ecosystem. That and the whole Apple TV, Apple TV+ brand confusion. Then people assume, correctly, that they will have to buy an Apple device and then also pay for a subscription.
Coupled with the low energy of their brand image, it makes people uninterested in what they have to offer. They see it as not worth the expensive cost of entry. This puts Apple at an impasse. Where they have to sell minimalist, exclusivity and alienation in a business that only thrives financially with colorful, inclusive and creative expression.