Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon can’t save The Morning Show – but Steve Carell shines in creepy role

Apple TV+’s long-anticipated series focuses on the fallout after a popular male news presenter is fired for sexual misconduct

But the #MeToo-inspired drama is so self-important you wind up relating to, and sympathising with, the predatory villain

4-MIN READ4-MIN

Jennifer Aniston (left) as Alex Levy and Reese Witherspoon as Bradley Jackson in The Morning Show. Photo: Apple

Published: 1:00am, 2 Nov 2019Updated: 7:21pm, 6 Nov 2019

Here’s one reason to fork over US$4.99 for a subscription to Apple’s new streaming TV network: so you can join those of us already trying to figure out how they spent all that effort and money (US$15 million per episode, I read) on their new series.

A series that got two of Hollywood’s most powerful women to sign on, co-produce and co-star in a #MeToo-inspired drama series that is somehow so implausibly overblown and poorly envisioned that the one character you wind up relating to – even sympathising with – is the predatory creep.

Everybody calm down. The Morning Show , the marquee offering from Apple TV+’s long-anticipated launch on Friday, is hardly what I would describe as a car wreck, at least judging by the first three episodes (of 10) made available for this review.

It is, however, a conspicuous glitch, in which ambition has been rear-ended by self-importance, causing it to bump into a dump truck full of clichés.

As a show, it’s spread on as thick as it looked to be in all those teaser trailers, a promisingly salacious tale of conflict that gets bogged down by its need to also seem noble.