Never before in the history of television has there been a high-end drama as absurd as The Morning Show (Apple TV+, Wednesday). Unveiled in 2019 as a prestige appetite-whetter for Apple’s new streaming service, the Jennifer Aniston-Reese Witherspoon newsroom dramedy immediately morphed into a wigged-out fever dream.
Watching this polished romp was like plunging into the imagination of a mad inventor – if the mad inventor wanted to give Netflix a run for its money. Long-time fans will recall the occasion Witherspoon’s plucky reporter, Bradley Jackson, was blasted into space for an entire episode. They may also remember her gatecrashing the January 6th Washington riots and scrubbing footage of her Maga-worshipping brother’s part in the destruction. Then there was Mad Men’s Jon Hamm, who cameoed as a dapper take on Elon Musk – and immediately embarked on a fling with Aniston’s imperious breakfast TV news anchor Alex Levy (a sort of shiny American Anne Doyle).
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Hamm has left the frame as series four arrives, but The Morning Show is still running a temperature. By the end of an enjoyably unhinged first episode, it has orchestrated a way to bring Witherspoon’s Bradley Jackson back from retirement to the fictional UBA network and to have Aniston’s Levy help an Iranian Olympic fencer defect along with her father.
It has also upgraded the cast, with Jeremy Irons playing Levy’s disapproving journalist lecturer father (he dreamed of her winning Pulitzers rather than topping the ratings) and Marion Cotillard as a ruthless UBA executive. These newcomers are joined by Boyd Holbrook as a right-wing YouTuber. This part is likely to be regarded as unintentionally controversial in the wake of the shooting of real-life right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk.
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The Morning Show makes all sorts of allusions to real-world events. Early in the new season, Jackson receives mysterious texts hinting at an environmental cover-up. Levy, meanwhile, comes to the attention of the security services and is the apparent victim of an AI stitch-up – she’s been deep-faked into the firing line.
With another drama, these plot lines would serve to firmly ground the script in reality. However, The Morning Show is fuelled by pure soap opera intrigue – a fact that only Billy Crudup, as Levy’s former producer, seems aware of, as he demonstrates with a nostril-flaring performance.
Aniston and Witherspoon, by contrast, play it straight – but far from anchoring The Morning Show in any sort of grittiness, their deadpan turns make them look like unwitting punchlines of a grand farce. Yet far from a negative, the sheer excessiveness of the entire thing is a part of the appeal. I haven’t encountered such craziness since I turned on the actual evening news – although, in the case of The Morning Show, there is the reassurance of knowing the whole thing is a flight of fantasy.
