Apple TV + is actually good

When Apple TV + launched at the end of 2019, I found the idea of ​​it annoying.

A big tech company entering the streaming game, simply because it could, throwing money around to attract talent with big names, but without making shows that were so great? The service’s big, flagship drama The Morning Show, boasts Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston and Steve Carell and so many other household names, but even at best, it was simply solid, a disappointment for a series with so much known talent.

And even worse than the other big streaming service – Amazon Prime Video – from the big tech company – Apple TV + does not have a library of favorite programs and movies to browse. The subscribers were pretty stuck with the apps that Apple made itself. And the programs it presented during the launch were adequate at best.

Imagine my grieving surprise when Apple TV + became one of the streaming services I was most used to by the pandemic, as I found more and more good programs to watch.

Ted Lasso became the service’s first genuine success, first taking TV Twitter by storm and then gabbing through the larger sphere of people who like TV comedies. And both the Emily Dickinson drama Dickinson and the alternative history drama For all mankind is one of the best programs currently made. Meanwhile, the service’s catalog of quality TVs to put your heels back on and expand by the day is getting bigger. (My favorite program of this type: the “children detective” noir Home before dark, who has absolutely no clear hearing, but is strangely convincing.)

I do not know that I would call Apple TV + essential, but if you are willing to spend $ 4.99 to watch it for a month, it’s a decent bet. And hey, if you have an Apple TV decoder, this is probably the best streaming device on the market, which brings all the apps you enjoy into a space that makes it easy to figure out which subscriptions you need have to be able to watch. they.

The easiest explanation why Apple TV + currently broadcasts so many solid programs is that it intentionally makes a limited number of them, mimicking the model of a network like HBO or FX and focusing on quality rather than quantity – as opposed to a service Netflix, which is trying to flood the zone with more and more things. Of course, not every single one of Apple’s original series will be a roaring success, and some will still be awful. But this kind of composite approach leads to more enjoyable performances.

But there’s another explanation why Apple TV + works so well for me right now: it has no clear intellectual property for me.

Apple does not own any major movie or TV franchises, so it has to go elsewhere for its ideas

Apple TV +

Intellectual property (IP) is a flashy way of telling “stories to which the business owns the rights.” Disney’s intellectual property, for example, contains all the animated princess movies and Mickey Mouse, but also the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars.

The wave of streaming services launched in 2019 and 2020 has been defined by the exploitation of intellectual property. Disney + has shows based on Star Wars and Marvel superfields, as well as, like, a Mighty Ducks series. Paramount + has so, so much Star Trek series, and HBO Max launched new Looney Toons shorts and new added Adventure time stories shortly thereafter. Even Peacock offered sequels to Saved by the Bell and Punky Brewster.

I do not want to put on any of these shows. Some of them are pretty good! But there is less mountain to climb to get an audience interested in yet another story from their favorite superheroes, spaceship captains, animated pals or an 80s orphan. You know these names, the theory goes. You may feel the strong pull of nostalgia to the original stories that focused on it. And so you can be more easily persuaded to invest in new stories built around the names.

I do not know that this approach across the board has been particularly successful you look Punky Brewster on Peacock? – but this was the predominant strategy of young streaming services. It’s only going to get worse from here on out. Every service I’ve mentioned is an overload of spinoffs, sequels, and remakes of titles and characters you’ve heard of, even if you do not have a fixed memory of, say, Chip & Dale: Rescue Rangers (a show that will receive an updated version at Disney +). More established services like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu are to some extent less dependent on intellectual property, but even they devour existing works to adapt.

To be clear, Apple TV + is also very busy with the IP business. Ted Lasso is technically an adaptation of a series of ads about a bumpy American starting to coach a football team, while Home before dark is loosely based on the true story of a girl who became a reporter who tells of what is happening in her area. (I’m not sure if we can call real people ‘intellectual property’, but give me that stories based on real people are a kind of adaptation.)

Apple is also adapting books and recreating old TV shows, and has made shows with Snoopy and the many other characters from the comic strip. Peanuts. Eventually it will be a big hit program, a Stranger things of a Bridgerton, a Handmaid’s Tale of a Boys, and it will all have an impact on success. (It is also noteworthy that the company makes and acquires films, and is the distributor of the very good documentary Son State and the great animated film Wolfwalkers.)

But there’s a major difference between Apple’s IP strategy and what Disney + says (which was also launched in late 2019). Apple TV + mostly adapts books and mostly selects titles that have not been previously adapted for the screen. But Disney + is not exactly interested in buying book rights if the Disney vault is there, full of IP that could represent it again for the streaming era. This is not to say that Disney + will never adapt features that were not yet movies or TV shows (the movie from 2020 The Only Ivan is based on a book not previously adapted, for example), but it points to projects that build on already successful Disney properties.

Apple TV + has no choice but to look elsewhere for its ideas. Combining the challenge with the focus on creating fewer, more consistently successful shows, it seems more likely that it will light up exciting and original projects that do not look like other things on TV. Say what you like about M. Night Shyamalan’s shocking, goth-y horror drama Servant, but it is now difficult to compare it with anything else in the air.

Would that translate to viewers viewing Apple TV + as a home for quality shows? It works all around the edges. Ted Lasso is a hit, and Dickinson, for all mankind, en Little America (an anthology of immigrant stories produced by Epic, a subsidiary of Vox Media) has a large cult audience. Put enough good programs like this together, and Apple TV + can go from a curiosity to a must-watch for many TV fans.

The Apple TV + approach will not always result in good television – the Jason Momoa vehicle See is hilariously bad – and it will not always result in memorable television. Although the overall quality is higher, Apple TV + still produces a few too many irreparable programs, such as the musical drama Little voice, which contains new songs by Sara Bareilles and of which I could not tell anything. I know I watched it at one time or another.

But making a smaller number of shows, based on fresh ideas, is a smart way to build a streaming service with a view to sticking out in the long run, especially if it shows from creative voices that new perspectives na vore can bring. (Dickinson creator Alena Smith, for example, was mostly a staff writer at Showtime’s The Affair before launching her handy mash-up of romantic longing, real history and dramatic dramas. of fresh and original television, I’m working on.