The Morning Show review - the flagship of the Apple TV+ launch feels uncomfortable in its own skin

When it comes to the crunch, can Apple cut it in the hyper-competitive arena of prestige television? As it releases its first tranche of original content under the Apple TV + banner, the jury could be forgiven for asking for more time to ponder.

Apple’s box of alleged delights includes at least one sure-fire pipsqueak in hysterical Game of Thrones clone See. The Morning Show (Apple TV+) is substantially better in that it actually hangs together as coherent drama. Plus, there’s the genuine novelty of seeing the power trio of Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carrell share the screen. Yet it's flawed too and certainly lacks the obsessive polish synonymous with Apple’s high-end gadgets.

The biggest stumbling point is that this $15 million per episode tale of skulduggery on the set of a morning news show in New York refuses to settle on a tone. One moment the series, loosely adapted from Brian Stelter’s 2013 non-fiction book Top of the Morning, wants to be a earnest rumination on #MeToo and its aftershock. The next it’s trying to update Pretty Woman, with Witherspoon’s redneck-out-of-water news reporter, Bradley Jackson, inheriting the Julia Roberts mantle of worldly naif.

Between these extremes it settles into a faintly uproarious screwball workplace comedy. But at no point does The Morning Show feel entirely at ease in its skin – a result, perhaps, of the 2018 departure of original show-runner Jay Carson owing to “creative differences”. With a second $150 million season greenlit, Apple has the time, and obviously the cash, to get things right. That’s just as well as the jewel in its prestige slate is crying out for top level tweaking.

Carrell plays Mitch Kessler, a sleazy morning host outed as a #MeToo offender. He is fired hours before he is due on screen, so co-anchor Alex Levy (Aniston) is required to face the cameras alone. She must walk the tightrope between empathising with Kessler’s victims and distancing herself, and her employer from any wrongdoing. The picture is complicated by Alex’s tense relationship with the network’s quietly menacing new head of news (Billy Crudup) over her stalled contract negotiations.

We are also introduced to Witherspoon as Bradley Jackson. She’s a journalist at an obscure conservative TV network whose hair-trigger temper has doomed her to the slow lane (she has never lived down dropping two f-bombs in the same bulletin). When she blows her top reporting on a coal mining protest the clip goes viral. From there a sequence of unlikely events bring her to New York. She is soon in the orbit of news chief Cory Ellison (the aforementioned Crudup).

Mitch is elsewhere hiding out in his mansion insisting he isn’t a true harasser, merely a powerful man who enjoyed sleeping with consenting interns, and who also has an office with a hidden inside lock: the better for ensuring alone time with vulnerable young women.

However, when he makes common cause with a disgraced Hollywood director played by comedian Martin Short we are in little doubt that the former is merely a sleazy opportunist, the latter a genuine predator. It probably doesn’t help that, even portraying a slimy boss from hell, Carrell is incapable of being less than completely charming and funny.

Crudup and Witherspoon, for their part, appear to be starring in their own private romantic comedy. Pretty Woman is explicitly referenced as Ellison flirtatiously arranges for an department store to open in the middle of the night so that Jackson can buy a new outfit. The glances he constantly throws her here and elsewhere feel like Crudup’s idea of how late Eighties Richard Gere would play the part. Is that the script or Crudup’s own innovation? We are left guessing. 

Then there is Alex, beset by career woes, paranoia about being usurped by a new presenter and a worsening relationship with her overworked producer (Mark Duplass). Aniston, an executive producer on The Morning Show along with Witherspoon, is essentially playing her Friends character Rachel Green had she gone on to be wildly successful in middle age but in the ultimate backstabbing profession. As was the case on the timeless sitcom, few actresses move between exasperated and knockabout as slickly.

So it’s not surprising The Morning Show is at its most engaging when she’s front and centre. If only the slightly rickety drama constructed around her had a clearer idea what it wants to be and for whom it is intended. As things stand, there are still plenty of glitches for Apple to work through if it hopes to take on Netflix and Disney at their own game.