Being Eddie — Did you know that Shalimar Seiuli, the trans hooker Eddie Murphy was caught with in 1998, died a year later, after falling five stories down the face of her apartment building? Don’t expect to hear that fun factoid in this official retrospective of the legendary comedian’s career. But maybe we’ll get to see “James Brown’s Celebrity Hot Tub Party” again. (Netflix)
A Merry Little Ex-Mas — On the cusp of their divorce, Alicia Silverstone and Oliver Hudson have plans to spend one final holiday together. But when his new girlfriend shows up, even that humble aspiration becomes a tall order. See, this is why it’s always better to make a clean break, like the Murdaughs did. (Netflix)
Premieres Thursday:
The Beast in Me — Afflicted by writer’s block since losing her son, an author (Claire Danes) gets interested in life again when a suspected murderer moves in next door. And why shouldn’t she? In the best-case scenario, she could get a whole new novel out of it. Especially if she can figure out how to outsource the adverbs to ChatGPT. (Netflix)
Tiffany Haddish Goes Off — The irrepressible comic actor and some of her childhood buddies take a wacky girls’ trip to South Africa, Zimbabwe and Tanzania. No Nigeria, though, because a Signal chat they’re all on said some shit is about to go down. (Peacock)
Premieres Friday:
Come See Me in the Good Light — Documentary cameras follow married poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley as they navigate Gibson’s diagnosis of ovarian cancer. This doc won the Festival Film Favorite Award at this year’s Sundance, just five months before Gibson passed away. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame want you to know they could be just as punctual if this country would get off its ass and standardize Daylight Saving Time. (Apple TV)
The Creep Tapes Season 2 — David Dastmalchian is among the guest stars as the found-footage series profiles new victims of the insidious Peachfuzz. Coincidentally, “the insidious peach fuzz” is what Usha has been calling JD ever since he started coming home smelling like Erika Kirk and White Claw. (Shudder and AMC+)
Malice — It’s Saltburn without the whacking off, as a vengeful nanny (Jack Whitehall) plots the destruction of an upper-class British family headed by David Duchovny. Wait a minute, if it’s Fox Mulder we’re talking about, this is probably more like BRIGHTburn. WITH whacking off. (Prime Video )
Nouvelle Vague — Richard Linklater dramatizes the filming of Godard’s Breathless in what Variety called “an enchanting ode to the rapture of cinema.” In their spare time, they all break into Barnes & Noble together and lick the Criterion Collection. (Netflix)
The Seduction — The umpteenth riff on Les Liaisons Dangereuses is a prequel series that has roles for Anamaria Vartolomei, Diane Kruger and Vincent Lacoste. Not to be outdone, Disney+ has placed an eight-episode order for Cruel Intentions Babies. (HBO Max)
Premieres Sunday:
Landman — High-profile cast additions in Season 2 of the Texas big-oil drama include Colm Feore, Andy Garcia and Sam Elliott. Wait a minute, you’re telling me Sam Elliott wasn’t already in this thing? I thought SAG had a rule that you have to hire him if your show is set west of New Orleans and there’s a role for Dennis Weaver with pharyngitis. (Paramount+)
Premieres Monday:
Epic Ride: The Story of Universal Theme Parks — This glorified ad for the Universal family of parks has now been delayed two times since its promised launch last July. The problem is that they keep having to update it every time somebody snuffs it on Stardust Racers. (Peacock)
The Mighty Nein — While you wait for the fifth and final season of The Legend of Vox Machina, enjoy the same cast of Critical Role principals in this stopgap animated show set in the world of Dungeons & Dragons. Or you could just visit your local comic shop on whatever day of the week everybody’s mom cleans out the basement. (Prime Video)
Selena y Los Dinos: A Family’s Legacy — The Tejano sensation’s short but groundbreaking career is recapped in a doc that also won big at year’s Sundance, this one in the category of Archival Storytelling. The runner-up in that category: “The Inspiring Life and Brilliant Future of Andrew Cuomo.” (Netflix)
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Plus everything else premiering on Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, Peacock and Disney+ this week
All the streaming shows debuting this week on Netflix, Apple TV, Prime Video and the rest
Plus a schlock-doc about the racialized 2023 Ocala shooting and the return of ‘Loot’ on Apple TV
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Starting in 2026, all MLS games will be available to Apple TV subscribers. That includes regular season matches, and annual events like the Leagues Cup tournament, the MLS All-Star Game, the Campeones Cup and the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs.
First announced in 2022, the MLS Season Pass remains one of Apple’s most significant forays into sports programming to date. As part of its original agreement with MLS, Apple became the exclusive way soccer fans streamed MLS games globally, eliminating any kind of regional blackout as long as Apple TV was accessible. That level of access will now continue, without the need to pay $15 a month for MLS Season Pass. You just need an Apple TV subscription to keep up with your favorite team.
“We’re thrilled to bring MLS to more fans around the world next season on Apple TV,” Eddy Cue, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Services, shared in the announcement. “Every match, all in one place, alongside incredible Apple Originals — it’s a win for fans everywhere.”
While Apple hasn’t succeeded in locking down NBA or NFL games like its competitors Amazon and Google, the company has been slowly growing its sports ambitions. Apple’s Friday Night Baseball streams now seem modest in comparison to what it’s doing with the MLS and F1. The company’s five-year F1 deal includes every Grand Prix race, along with practice, qualifying and sprint sessions. With the FIFA World Cup on the way in 2026, the company’s new MLS deal is also impeccably timed.
Update, November 12, 5:03PM ET: Added details and a quote from Apple’s official announcement.
This morning Apple TV dropped a new trailer to confirm that Monarch will return to the streamer early next year on February 27. Picking up where the first season left off, the show will continue to flash back and forth across the life of Lee Shaw (played as a young Army officer in the 1950s by Wyatt Russell and in the modern day by his father Kurt), as he helps two siblings discover their own family’s connection to the mysterious titular organization as it attempts to research and counter the rise of titanic threats.
Season one ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, with the elder Shaw’s fate in doubt, but Apple did confirm that Kurt Russell will be back for more in season two, alongside other returning stars Anna Sawai, Kiersey Clemons, Ren Watabe, Mari Yamamoto, Joe Tippett, and Anders Holm. But beyond familiar human faces, there’ll be familiar monsters too: as well as a cavalcade of freaky-looking new creatures, the new trailer also confirmed that season two will bring our heroes to Skull Island, the home of King Kong—and that, of course, Kong will be making the island’s new guests feel right at home in his own manner.
It’s no surprise that Monarch season two will incorporate Kong, just as Godzilla himself served as an overarching presence across season one. Kong has become more and more integral to the Monsterverse movies since Godzilla vs. Kong and The New Empire, and with Supernova on the way in 2027, it’s no surprise that we might start seeing the groundwork for that movie teased in Kong’s appearances here.
We’ll start seeing if Monarch season two can live up to the great promise of its predecessor when it premieres on Apple TV February 27, 2026, rolling out the remainder of the 10-episode season on a weekly basis after that.
The new Apple TV series Pluribus stars Rhea Seahorn as one of a handful of people not overwhelmingly happy. Now that the first two episodes are out and people know what it’s about, some have wondered if this is all a metaphor for artificial intelligence.
Creator Vince Gilligan recently told Variety he thought up and wrote the show before AI and large language models like ChatGPT really gained prominence in recent years. That said, he won’t fight anyone who’s made those connections, just as he isn’t planning to explain things to the degree he did with Breaking Bad. “One thing I did wrong [there] was telling people, ‘This is what that meant!’ I look back and it was so tiresome,” he recalled. Going forward, he’s following advice once given to him by Michael Mann in 2002: “Just tell a good story, let the audience figure out the theme. That’s their job.”
Lest you think he’s secretly an AI booster, that’s not the case at all: after previously telling Polygon he’d never use it, Gilligan used Variety to further affirm his stance. “I hate AI. It’s the world’s most expensive and energy-intensive plagiarism machine. I think there’s a very high possibility that this is all a bunch of horseshit. It’s basically a bunch of centibillionaires whose greatest life goal is to become the world’s first trillionaires. I think they’re selling a bag of vapor.”
Gilligan’s beef with the technology primarily concerns “Silicon Valley assholes” who’ve put all their eggs in the AI basket. Because should it develop “a true singularity that has its own soul, and therefore its own identity,” does that mean companies like Meta and OpenAI have created digital slaves to monetize? He certainly seems to think so, and warns audiences to not get impressed by Silicon Valley’s latest shiny toy.
Like Heretic, the Pluribus credits declares it as a show “made by humans.” Whatever else you take away from it in the coming weeks, know that it was all done with a personal touch.
The Pluribus creator, whose new show premiered the first two episodes Friday on Apple TV+, made sure to note in the credits of the post-apocalyptic sci-fi series that the production did not rely on AI.
“This show was made by humans,” reads the credits, following a list of acknowledgments from the producers.
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In Pluribus, Rhea Seehorn plays Albuquerque author Carol Sturka, one of 12 people on Earth who is immune to an extraterrestrial virus that transforms everyone in the world into a relentlessly optimistic hive mind.
Gilligan previously slammed AI as he discussed the series. “I have not used ChatGPT, because as of yet, no one has held a shotgun to my head and made me do it,” he told Polygon.
“I will never use it. No offense to anyone who does,” added Gilligan. “I really wasn’t thinking about AI [when I wrote Pluribus], because this was about eight or 10 years ago.”
Meanwhile, Coca-Cola has faced backlash this week for another AI-generated holiday campaign, and the entertainment industry has expressed concern over AI creations like Tilly Norwood replacing human actors and other crew members.
What if the biggest problems plaguing humanity vanished overnight—and there was no more violence, crime, discrimination, or conflict? But what if the tradeoff for all that positivity and bland happiness was outrageously intrusive and creepy? That’s the launchpad that Pluribus, Apple TV’s newest sci-fi series, blasts off from, with a wonderfully complex main character at its core.
Pluribus is the latest series from Vince Gilligan, who got his start writing on The X-Files and went on to become a producer and director on that show, then created two award-winning series of his own: Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. The inaugural season of Pluribus runs nine episodes (io9 watched the first seven for the purposes of this review), with the first two streaming today and a weekly rollout thereafter.
Pluribus takes cues from each of those well-loved Gilligan titles. The setup is propelled by science fiction in that thought-provoking, surprisingly emotional X-Files way, but there’s also Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul’s anarchic, subvert-the-system energy, with Gillian’s signature sense of humor (wry, dry, clever, and observational) underpinning everything.
A fantastic Rhea Seehorn (Better Call Saul) stars as Carol Sturka, a successful author of “speculative historical romance literature” (think Outlander, but with pirates) who secretly loathes her books and is embarrassed by her fans. Carol’s able to stomach writing “mindless crap,” as she calls it, mostly because it funds the comfortable lifestyle she shares with Helen (Miriam Shor), her partner in life and business.
As we’re learning about Carol, Pluribus is also alerting us to another group of characters: scientists who’ve discovered something very unusual. The show periodically uses an on-screen timer to let you know exactly where we are in relation to the event that changes the world.
If you want to go in completely blind, here’s a warning (however, note that we don’t discuss any spoilers beyond the inciting event, hinted at in the show’s existing marketing, that propels everything that follows).
That world-changing event: a mysterious-in-origin phenomenon that links almost the entire population of the world into a single hive mind.
Think Unity from Rick and Morty, except in live-action, and Pluribus takes an astonishingly believable approach to what such a scenario might look like to an outsider—namely Carol, who’s unaffected by the outbreak. As humanity’s overhaul takes hold, it’s not unlike the opening scenes of a zombie movie, and Carol is left confused, terrified, and heartbroken.
There’s widespread death and destruction at first, but the chaos soon dies down and a placid new normal emerges. The affected, or “Others,” as Carol comes to call them, awaken with serene, irritatingly upbeat attitudes. They refer to themselves as “we” (the first episode is titled “We Is Us”), and since they share a single consciousness, everyone knows everything about everything. Any person, even a little kid, can perform open-heart surgery or pilot an airplane. And they know absolutely every little thing about Carol, thanks to their access to Helen’s mind and memories, as well as the surveillance drone they launch to keep tabs on her at all times.
The Others assure Carol they mean her no harm, though they are actively trying to figure out how to convert her. Dripping with benevolence, they place themselves at her beck and call. Carol, who was already a salty soul before being hit with this nightmare—and who has, she’ll have the Others know, seen many sci-fi movies that follow this exact plot, and it never ends well—responds with sarcasm and fury.
While Pluribus’ first two episodes necessarily front-load a lot of exposition, once we move past the initial shock of what’s happened, the show finds its true groove. We meet Carol’s “chaperone,” the elegant and accommodating Zosia (Karolina Wydra), who’s been hand-picked for hilarious reasons we won’t reveal here. Carol’s quest for allies doesn’t help much, including the flamboyant Diabaté (Our Flag Means Death’s Samba Schutte). He’s actually pleased as punch with the new status quo, especially the part about suddenly having beautiful women attending to his every need.
There’s also the remote Manousos (Carlos-Manuel Vesga), who’s even more unwilling to engage with the Others than Carol is. Carol, at least, will pick up the phone when she needs groceries restocked or help flipping on the power in her hometown of Albuquerque—a favorite Gilligan setting and an ideal backdrop for Carol’s personal post-apocalypse, where surreal horrors and deep loneliness play out against stunning natural beauty.
As Carol vacillates between boozy despair, bursts of anger, inconveniences galore, and an investigative quest to dig up information on the Others—the latter a coping mechanism more than anything—we dig deeper into Pluribus’ exquisitely balanced existential crisis. Carol’s life is messy. She is miserable. Things weren’t awesome before, but they’ve definitely taken an extreme downturn in the aftermath. It would be so easy to just give in and join the Others’ collective crusade; it’s an option that Carol has, unlike the billions of others across Earth who became part of this without any choice or warning.
But she also knows that giving up everything that makes her an individual, even her many unpleasant qualities, means she’ll no longer be human. And that’s something she’s prepared to keep a death grip on—even if sometimes being a human really, really sucks.
Pluribus already has a second season in the works, so there’s no telling what kind of resolve we’ll get when this batch of episodes is over. But no matter what happens, it’s clear Carol is a new hero for our times: stubborn, impulsive, cranky, and short-tempered, yet also intelligent, funny, resourceful, and easy to root for. Not to mention, she’s determined to save a world that might seem superficially improved—but she knows is steadily spiraling into a dystopia even more disastrous than the one it left behind.
Carol gets an unlikely companion and struggles to connect with her fellow non-conforming humans. Photo: Apple TV
Despite the Albuquerque setting and Rhea Seehorn’s presence in the lead role, there hasn’t been much obvious crossover between Vince Gilligan’s previous series, the crime drama Better Call Saul, and Pluribus, which perhaps links up more firmly with his past as a writer on The X-Files. But it’s worth noting a couple of places in the thrillingly expansive second episode, “Pirate Lady,” that draw the two shows together.
First, there’s the classic WTF cold open, which may not be as cryptic as the pre-title sequences in Better Call Saul or Breaking Bad, but it introduces us to characters and a scenario that are wholly disconnected from what we’ve seen so far. (Think, say, the “Madrigal” episode of Breaking Bad, which opens with a desultory German CEO dipping chicken tenders into a variety of sauces.) In “Pirate Lady,” an unnamed woman in a burlap robe strides toward an overturned vehicle in a Middle Eastern city, wrenches a charred-up dead body from the driver’s seat, and drags it through an open window. With help from a nearby truck driver, she wraps up the body and drags it uphill to the bus, where we can see other bodies are being collected. From there, she drives a waiting moped to the airport, climbs into the cockpit of a cargo plane, and pilots it to Albuquerque, where minions await with coffee, a hot shower, and a change of identity.
While we can certainly guess who she might be visiting in New Mexico, the open is an opportunity for the show to broaden its scope and suggest the true global scale of this alien operation. It’s one thing to look at the smoking, chaotic city of Albuquerque and imagine scenes like it happening elsewhere, but another thing entirely to see the disquieting sequence where this unnamed being is zipping around dead bodies and burning buildings halfway around the world. And other details count, too, like the importance the aliens have placed on cleaning up the mess they’ve made. They don’t want the earth to be an apocalypse of rotting corpses and smoking wreckage, but something closer to the utopia these seemingly gentle visitors want to promote. Plus, a hierarchy has been introduced around this one character who many others are serving — and who will later emerge as an ambassador of their values.
The second connection is that for as much as Kim Wexler would have in common with Carol Struka, Carol at this moment seems even closer to Everett Acker, the cranky old coot who refused to leave his home in Better Call Saul. On that show, Kim represents a bank that’s seeking to evict the final resident from a piece of property where it intends to build a call center. But Acker won’t leave, and he greets anyone who asks with nasty invective, including Kim, who initially tries to bully him out before deciding that she’s in his corner. Carol is Acker: Unpleasant but righteous and willing to stand on principle. She assumes she’ll get dragged away at some point, but until that happens, no amount of enticement will get her to leave her spot.
“Pluribus” crackles with terrific comic tension as Carol wakes up next to her dead partner, filled with grief yet spoiling for a fight. Her stubborn side comes out in her quixotic effort to dig a grave for Helen in their backyard — we certainly know from past Gillian shows that holes in New Mexico are not easily dug — but she’s devoted, too, and tender in picking out the right quilt in which to lay Helen to rest. The timing isn’t great for an unnamed visitor to stop in with a bottle of water and some advice on how better to penetrate the volcanic rock in her yard. Carol is not impressed to learn that “Jarmell Gurky,” the line supervisor at the Aquafina bottling plant, says the water is okay to drink. She cracks it open and pours it into the ground — very Everett Acker-esque.
Yet Carol does need help, loathe though she might be to get it. And she does actually care deeply about her fellow man, despite the unkind things she’s said in the past about “HoustonMom” and the other dimwits who like her books. After her fury results in the unnamed visitor falling into a spell and shaking — which, she learns, causes every other being to do likewise — news that it results in fatalities worldwide literally sickens her. She is an inadvertent mass murderer, just like the aliens who have taken over her planet. Among the important things she learns in this episode is that she’ll have to control her temper or people will die, which bothers her immensely, even as the beings rush to reassure her. (Maybe because they’ve killed infinitely more people, but we’ll get to that in a bit.)
Though it pointedly takes Carol longer than anyone to ask the name of the important visitor from the opening sequence, we eventually learn it’s Zosia (Karolina Wydra), who looks familiar to her because of her resemblance to Raban, the hunky space pirate of her fantasy series. That Raban was originally written as a woman freaks Carol out, because only she and Helen knew about that, which means that the alien has absorbed all her dead partner’s memories and is now using them to ingratiate herself with Carol. That’s an awful thing to do. But Carol is naturally curious to understand why she’s among 12 people who were not susceptible to “joining” the invaders. Where are the others? Can they meet?
The get-together of English-speaking humans at an airport in Bilbao takes the episode to another level of comedy and philosophy. First, there’s the surreality of Carol huddling up with the first four non-conforming humans — Otgonbayer (Amaraa Sanjid), Xiu Mei (Sharon Gee), Kusimayu (Darinka Arones), and Laxmi (Menik Gooneratne) — as their “joined” family members stand around pleasantly in the background. (“We’re very pleased to meet you, Carol,” they say in unison.) Then there’s the arrival of the fifth, Koumba Diabaté (Samba Schutte), in Air Force One, which the aliens have fetched at his request, along with the phalanx of sexy stewardesses who tend to him. Koumba has picked up on the aliens’ eagerness to please the non-conformists quicker than the rest, and he’s exploiting his power like an amiable Nero.
Once all of them gather for a meeting, the argument against Carol’s skepticism becomes obvious: Why is any of this bad? Joining the aliens seems like a path to eternal contentedness, and, in the meantime, they can have anything they desire, from a tour of the Guggenheim to food service on par with Judgment City in the film Defending Your Life. Carol isn’t having it. She doesn’t like that nearly everyone on earth has been turned into an anesthetized pod person and doesn’t understand why the others can’t see how sinister it is. “It does not matter how nice they are to us or how many supermodels they send to peel our grapes and jerk us off,” she says. “It does not change the fact that this is not right.”
Carol may be correct, but she’s incapable of being diplomatic about it. When Laxmi pushes back against her, Carol is so annoyed by Laxmi treating her adorable son, Ravi, like a real child that she quizzes the boy on the gynecological expertise he now possesses. Ultimately, only the easy-going Koumba continues to speak with her, but it’s Carol’s deepening relationship with Zosia that seems most crucial to the show going forward. The peace-loving utopia that Zosia and the aliens, who we learn are called Celtiberians, are promoting has some ethical holes that Carol is smart enough to expose. Chiefly, if the Celtiberians are so committed to peace that they won’t kill a living thing deliberately, then how can they justify the 886,477,591 humans who have died so far in their mission on Earth? (“I guess you gotta break a few eggs, huh?”, snipes Carol, channeling George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove.)
The final moments of the episode are more poignant, however, and suggest an important shift in the Carol-Celtiberian divide. Koumba has decided that he likes Zosia and wants her to be his companion, an arrangement that Carol is told requires her blessing. Carol is repulsed by how regressive this sounds and nearly loses her temper for an alien-shaking third time in the episode. “That’s your idea of paradise?,” she asks Zosia. “Being used like some sex doll?” But in the final moments, when Carol is back in her coach seat on the plane, something nags at her. She’s lonely, but she can see as plainly as we can that Zosia is affected by what she’s said. Maybe this is how the revolution starts. Or maybe, like another ending that unfolds on an airport tarmac, this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
• Maybe the connection was unintentional, but the sight of humanoid aliens loading humans into trucks and zipping away on two-wheelers calls to mind Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin. (Though the Celtiberians are much, much, much gentler to mankind than ScarJo and her kind in that film.)
• A seeming amateur stepping into a cockpit and piloting a decommissioned plane across the sea? Who does Zosia think she is, Nathan Fielder?
• Jarmell Gurky is an A+ funny movie name.
• The power to recall any information or communicate mentally to anyone is, admittedly, extremely cool. Witness that slight pause when Zosia inquires about the five English-speakers being willing to meet with Carol before she says, “All five say yes.”
• “Who’s flying this thing? That gal from TGI Friday’s?”
• Amusing to hear everyone discussing the finer points of the movie Air Force One on the plane: “Actually, if you’ll recall, Harrison Ford never rode in the escape pod, which I thought was a clever gambit. He stayed behind in the cargo hold.”
• Carol’s various descriptions of Ravi to his mother are devastatingly funny: “The one who can perform open-heart surgery and fly the space shuttle,” who is also “your prime minister, some guy you dated in high school, your gynecologist.”
• From the Department of Things Are Not So Bad, Koumba makes the counterargument to Carol: “As we speak, no one is being robbed or murdered. No one is in prison. The color of one’s skin, by all accounts, now meaningless. All zoos are empty. All dogs are off their chains. Peace on Earth.” Then there’s the counter-counterargument from Xiu Mei, who’s annoyed that a freed Beijing giraffe is eating the leaves off her tree.
• Kudos to Carol for resisting the temptation of the pepper bacon she ate in 1998 and the crispy brioche the aliens have flown in for her. I’d personally sell out humanity for the food thing alone. I’m weak.
• An important philosophical exchange to monitor in the future: Zosia telling Carol that her people can’t choose and Carol responding, “Yes, you can. If you can do square roots in your head, you can make choices.” We all make choices. Some of those choices are inevitably hurtful or even destructive. Celtiberians are not immune.
Emma Thompson in ‘Down Cemetery Road’ Credit: courtesy of Apple TV
Premieres Wednesday:
Ballad of a Small Player — Filmmaker Edward Berger (Conclave) casts Colin Farrell as an inveterate gambler and swindler living under an assumed identity in China. The Wall Street Journal called it “a failed attempt to wring laughs out of this abundantly awful man.” That was on page B25, directly opposite a full-page profile of Peter Thiel. (Netflix)
Down Cemetery Road — Emma Thompson plays a private investigator whose search for a missing girl uncovers a shocking secret: Vast numbers of Britons who were believed dead are secretly still alive and well. “How does a guy get in on that?” asks Keir Starmer. (Apple TV)
Hazbin Hotel Season 2 — With the forces of Heaven vanquished, Charlie finds her infernal hostelry overrun with new guests who see no need to renounce their evil ways. See, God? This is what happens when you think you’re putting Charlie Kirk somewhere where he can’t do any more damage. (Prime Video)
Ink Master — The prize is not only $250,000 but recognition for one’s origins in Season 17, which carries the theme “Hometown Heroes.” That’s a significant departure from the previous 16 seasons, the theme of which was “hepatitis.” (Paramount+)
Selling Sunset — Season 9 adds new realtor Sandra Vergara, who just so happens to be Sofia Vergara’s cousin. And also her adoptive sister. How does that work, you ask? Forget it, Jake, it’s Sunset! (Netflix)
Star Wars: Visions — Season 3 of the animated anthology hearkens back to Season 1 by once again focusing entirely on anime. I don’t know, do we think that genre is really bankable yet? (Disney+)
Colin Farrell in ‘Ballad of a Small Player’ Credit: courtesy of Netflix
Premieres Thursday:
Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers — Archival footage and interviews with survivors paint a documentary portrait of the criminal psychopath who made living in Central Florida a waking nightmare in the late 20th century. And here you thought everyone had forgotten Glenda Hood! (Netflix)
Amsterdam Empire — Famke Janssen takes on the role of a former Europop star who tries to ruin her husband’s cannabis business as revenge for his infidelity. I never thought I’d say this, but J.Lo’s inability to find true and lasting love suddenly seems kind of trivial. (Netflix)
Hell House LLC: Lineage — The fifth and final installment in the franchise about a cursed haunted attraction is the first one that isn’t based on found footage. Which I’m assuming means it was stolen. (Shudder)
Juan Gabriel: I Must, I Can, I Will — Four documentary episodes retrace the remarkable career of the flamboyant Mexican balladeer, who became a gay icon despite having fathered six children with three different women. In related news, my strategy of hanging around the Parliament House for four years is due to put me up to my neck in it any minute now. (Netflix)
Son of a Donkey — The Australian YouTube duo known as Superwog launches a new series that explores the lighter side of modern challenges like road rage, online scams and failing kidneys. It must be nice to live in a country where those are your biggest problems. Some of us would gladly give up a kidney to be that close to Kylie. (Netflix)
The Witcher Season 4 — The eagerly anticipated penultimate season finds Liam Hemsworth taking over the title role from Henry Cavill. But don’t worry, Henry fans: You’ll be able to see him soon enough, in … oh, I’ll think of something. (Netflix)
Premieres Friday:
Bad Influencer — A single mother with a special-needs child to take care of runs afoul of the law when she conscripts an aspiring influencer to help her sell phony handbags. And she might have gotten away with it, if Kim Kardashian hadn’t spotted the unauthorized knockoff of her pubes. (Netflix)
Breathless — The Joaquín Sorolla Hospital has gone entirely private as Season 2 begins, forcing our already taxed resident physicians to make some tough choices. For example, when they have to tell a cancer patient that insurance won’t cover her treatment, do they do it through the portal or as a Zoom puppet show? (Netflix)
The White House Effect — Return with us now to the complicated days of Bush 41, when warring factions of the Republican party problematized the administration’s response to climate change. Nowadays, the warring factions are the ones who want to ignore it and the ones who want to ignore it while wearing blackface. (Netflix)
Premieres Monday:
Crutch — This spinoff from the CBS series The Neighborhood has Tracy Morgan as a Harlem businessman who’s having to do a lot of recalibrating now that his grown son and daughter have moved back in with him. In the hilarious third episode, the son comes out as gay and Tracy stabs him to death with a kitchen knife. (Paramount+)
In Waves and War — Follow the healing journey of three Navy SEALs who had to travel overseas to be prescribed psychedelics for their PTSD. Meanwhile, ICE want you to know they’re going to shoot you in the face if you try to charge them for that vanilla latte. (Netflix)
Premieres Tuesday:
All’s Fair — And speaking of Kim Kardashian, she’s been cast in the lead role of a divorce attorney in Ryan Murphy’s new legal drama. Supporting parts go to Glenn Close, Naomi Watts and Sarah Paulson, who might be stars themselves someday if they can just get their muffs on Candies. (Hulu)
Leanne Morgan: Unspeakable Things — Taking a momentary step away from her Netflix sitcom, the Tennessee comedian fills us in on everything that’s been going on in her life, like adjusting to success and trying gummies. As opposed to Pete Davidson, who’s adjusting to gummies and thinking about trying success. (Netflix)
Squid Game: The Challenge — The spinoff competition show stays married to the bit in Season 2, pitting another 456 contestants against each other in pursuit of $4.56 million. High concept, right? Now give me my two tickets to Tucson, because my flight is boarding at Gate 2 in two minutes. (Netflix)
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Plus a schlock-doc about the racialized 2023 Ocala shooting and the return of ‘Loot’ on Apple TV
Plus everything else debuting on Netflix, HBO Max, Peacock and the rest
Plus everything else debuting this week on Prime Video, Shudder, AMC+ and the rest
Using Spotify on Apple TV might be a smoother experience going forward. Spotify has released an entirely new “experience” that integrates many of its mobile features to Apple TV, including managing your queue and viewing lyrics.
The updated Spotify for Apple TV app also includes remote control via Connect — hopefully there won’t be any future issues with changing the volume. You can also use Spotify DJ, the AI-powered guide for choosing what to listen to next.
If you’re a big video person then there’s another update for you. Apple TV will now be able to show podcast videos and let you adjust playback speed on any videos. It’s good timing as Spotify recently announced that some of its podcast videos will come to Netflix in early 2026.
The update also brings one of Spotify’s newer ventures to Apple TV: music videos. Any Premium subscribers in one of the 97 beta markets with the feature can choose “switch to video” on any song that has a music video. It works just like the tool for Podcasts.
All of these updates come with an entirely new interface that Spotify has created specifically for tvOS, redesigned Spotify for Apple TV should roll out for everyone by mid-November.
Fight for your right to feel crappy. Photo: Apple TV/YouTube
Have you ever been depressed at karaoke? Unable to feel the love at a wedding? Ever been to a party and thought, Oh, my vibes are so off — and everyone knows? Inthe new show from Vince Gilligan, starring Better Call Saul’s Rhea Seehorn, one lady is tanking the energy of the entire world. Here, everything you need to know about Pluribus, the new show breaking the S curse for Apple TV.
You can’t get this guy out of New Mexico. He loves it! Like Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul before it, Pluribus is set in Albuquerque. Entertainment Weeklysays Seehorn plays Carol, a historical-romance author who wants to “save humanity from happiness.” Some time before the series’ start, a virus swept the globe and made everyone content and placid. And based on the trailer, it seems the world isn’t cool with Carol being left out.
No one likes a spoilsport, apparently. In the trailer for Pluribus, we see everyone from a shipping-company worker to the president trying to turn Carol’s frown upside down. The guy from the shipping company would give her a hand grenade if it would make her happy. But why is Carol’s local Sprouts abandoned? Do the happy no longer need to eat? We’ll find out more in November.
Seehorn will be joined/opposed by Karolina Wydra (True Blood)and telenovela star Carlos Manuel Vesga. Miriam Shor, Samba Schutte, and Peter Bergman guest-star.
Besides the location and the star? It’s possible. Gilligan told EW that there are little nods to his past work in the show. “There might be a couple if you keep your eyes and ears peeled,” he said. “Fans of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, if they pay close attention, they might come upon an Easter egg or two.”
Catch the fever when the first two episodes of Pluribus come to Apple TV (without the +) on November 7. New episodes will drop every Friday until December 26. And there’s already an order for a second season.
Everything we’ve seen from the new show from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul mastermind Vince Gilligan has been a mystery—from cryptic teasers to an ominous conversation with the President himself, all we’ve really gotten a flavor of so far is that something has gone very, very wrong with the world, save for one woman (Carol, played by longtime Gilligan collaborator Rhea Seehorn). Now, we know a little more, and it’s only getting creepier.
Ahead of its launch in a few weeks, Apple TV has launched the first full trailer for Pluribus, giving us a slightly better picture of its strange world where everyone in the world is blissfully happy, save for seemingly just author Carol Sturka. Carol is rightfully freaked out, and not just because of the rest of humanity’s sudden positivity, but because humanity is seemingly ardent in figuring out how she can join the rest of them at any cost.
It’s not just the blindingly optimistic, almost zombified happy people that are giving the creep factor, though. This new trailer gives us a better look at the wider world around Carol, and it seems like whatever’s happened in the world to turn the rest of humanity this way, there was a major disaster beforehand—ambulances everywhere, cities and vehicles on fire, dead bodies; they’re all slowly but surely being cleaned up by cheerily marching hordes of people. People who then still stop at nothing but to acknowledge Carol and her difference the second she’s in public.
It’s a great vibe, and even with showing us much more of the show than we’ve seen already, it still barely gives anything away—and has us dying to see more of what Gilligan has cooking.
Pluribus hits Apple TV from November 7, kicking off with a two-episode premiere.
Amex Platinum Cardholders Can Now Get Free Apple TV
Apple and NBCUniversal have launched a new Apple TV and Peacock Bundle. The first-of-its-kind bundle offers the services’ complementary array of award-winning originals, marquee live events and sports, beloved franchises, and blockbuster movies, including Ted Lasso, Severance, The Paper, The Traitors, How to Train Your Dragon, the NBA (tipping off October 21 on Peacock), F1 The Movie (coming later this year), and much more, all through one convenient monthly subscription.
Customers in the U.S. can save over 30 percent by subscribing to the Apple TV and Peacock Premium bundle for $14.99 per month, or Apple TV and Peacock Premium Plus for $19.99 per month, through either app or website.
Many readers will benefit from purchasing this bundle through Peacock, as that should trigger the recently enhanced Entertainment Credit on the Amex Platinum Card. Those cardholders get up to $25 back in statement credits each month on eligible purchases on one or more of the following: Disney+, a Disney+ bundle, ESPN+, Hulu, The New York Times, Paramount+, Peacock, The Wall Street Journal, YouTube Premium, and YouTube TV.
You can see more details about this new bundle here.
It’s also worth noting that if you don’t care about Apple TV, then you can get Peacock for free through Walmart+. That’s a free membership for Amex Platinum cardholders, which would then let you use the $25 monthly credit for another service.
There’s yet another streaming bundle in town, and it will be ideal for fans of Ted Lasso and The Office. Apple and Peacock have teamed up to provide both of their streaming services together in a bundle starting at $15 per month. The new Apple TV + Peacock bundle is officially available now for $15 monthly for the ad-supported tier.
This is a mighty fine deal, given that Apple TV recently changed both its name and price. The platform costs $13 per month now on its own. Peacock starts at $11 per month. In other words, this is a discount of around $9 each month. In this economy, we’ll take any savings we can get.
As mentioned previously, the only caveat is that the base tier includes ads. The subscription shoots up to $20 per month for an ad-free version. However, a standalone subscription to ad-free Peacock is $17 on its own. Additionally, Apple One subscribers will get a 35 percent discount on Peacock Premium Plus plans. It’s always nice when two lonely corporations find friendship, isn’t it?
For the uninitiated, Apple TV is the company’s big-wig streaming platform. It’s primarily known for sci-fi like Severance, For All Mankind and the upcoming Pluribus. The platform is also host to plenty of comedy, like The Studio, Shrinking and Ted Lasso.
Peacock is NBC’s streaming service. It streams old-school network programming like The Office, Grimm and Superstore. The service features a stable of original programming like Poker Face, Twisted Metal and the underrated Mrs. Davis. The platform also recently premiered a little show called The Paper, which is a spinoff of The Office. Against all odds, this is actually a great little sitcom and a worthy successor to the original.
Apple announced on Friday that it had signed a five-year deal to bring Formula 1exclusively to Apple TV in the U.S. The deal had been rumored for a while, but now it’s official: Apple just landed one of the world’s most popular—and fastest-growing—sports.
As Apple continues to build out its Apple TV subscription, sports are the obvious place to turn. Apple has dabbled in sports with its MLS package and Friday Night MLB, but this is different. In fact, buried in the press release was something I didn’t expect: Some of it will be free.
Specifically, the company says all practice sessions and select races will be available in the Apple TV app, even for people who don’t pay for an Apple TV subscription. That might sound small, but it completely changes what this deal is really about. Apple didn’t just buy the rights to show F1 races in the U.S., it’s using them to build a funnel.
Look, tech companies have been trying to buy up sports streaming rights every chance they can. The NFL has games on Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, and YouTube. The NBA, which starts its season soon, split its distribution rights across a handful of different platforms. Every one of those platforms hopes to use their slice of the pie to entice customers to sign up for their service.
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Basically, they pay billions to lock something behind a subscription and force you to pay. But Apple isn’t doing that here. At least, not entirely. A lot of the overall F1 content will be available for free in the Apple TV app.
There are a few reasons for that, but the most obvious is that F1 races are currently on ESPN, which is available to millions of people who either get it through their cable bundle or who subscribe to the Disney+ bundle. The sport has exploded in popularity in the U.S., largely thanks to Drive to Survive and the fact that it’s pretty easy to get ESPN. I can’t imagine Formula 1 wanted to cut off that much distribution by locking it all inside an Apple TV subscription.
Apple’s decision to make some of it free solves that. It keeps casual fans in the loop while offering something ESPN never could—a fully integrated experience that spans Apple devices and services.
And it gives F1 something just as valuable: reach. The free sessions will show up in the Apple TV app, which is already installed on millions of devices. That keeps F1 visible even to people who weren’t looking for it.
This deal isn’t structured like Apple’s MLS package, which is a separate subscription. This time, Apple made Formula 1 part of its base Apple TV service and sprinkled in free access for everyone else.
It’s also worth noting that this is Apple’s first move that looks more like ESPN than Netflix. It’s the company’s biggest step yet toward becoming a full-fledged sports network, but one built entirely around Apple’s ecosystem. Formula 1 won’t just live on Apple TV—it’ll show up in Apple News, Maps, Music, Fitness+, and the new Apple Sports app, which will feature real-time leaderboards, standings, and widgets for your iPhone’s home screen. Even F1’s own streaming service, F1 TV Premium, will stay alive and become free for subscribers.
What looked like a sports-rights announcement is really a play for attention. Apple isn’t trying to own sports—it’s trying to own how people experience them. By making part of Formula 1 free, Apple gets the best of both worlds: expanded reach for the sport, and added value for its customers.
The company knows that in an era where everything is behind a paywall, the smartest way to sell exclusivity might be to give a little of it away. And when you think about it that way, the free part of Apple’s F1 deal isn’t surprising at all. It’s inevitable.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
Apple has for the US broadcast rights to Formula 1 racing. Under the terms of a five-year pact with F1 parent company Liberty Media, Apple TV will air every F1 race starting in 2026.
The company says subscribers to the newly rebranded Apple TV will be able to watch every Grand Prix, along with each practice, qualifying and sprint session. Non-subscribers will be able to watch “select races” for free in the Apple TV app. You won’t have to pony up to watch practice sessions.
Through the Apple Sports app, F1 fans can get live updates on qualifying and sprint sessions as well as Grands Prix. Expect real-time leaderboards (including for the driver and constructor championships), along with an iPhone home screen widget and Live Activities on the lock screen.
Apple will bring F1-related features to its News, Music, Maps and Fitness+ apps as well. The company will reveal more about “production details, product enhancements and all the ways fans will be able to enjoy F1 content across Apple products and services” in the lead up to the 2026 season, which starts with the Australian Grand Prix in March.
Formula 1 has its own dedicated streaming service and that’s not going away entirely in the US, but F1 TV Premium will be exclusively available through Apple TV. In fact, F1 TV Premium (which currently costs $130 per year) will be a free perk for Apple TV subscribers in the US. You’ll just need to link your F1 TV account to an Apple Account that has an active Apple TV subscription.
F1 TV Premium includes access to features like multiview, driver cams and team radio chatter, along with live telemetry and tire usage data. Live F2, F3, F1 Academy and Porsche Supercup coverage is included too.
The F1 deal will diversify Apple’s sports offerings. The company already has a long-term pact with MLS for exclusive rights to air games from North America’s top soccer league. However, the future of baseball on Apple TV is murky, with reports suggesting that Apple is set to cut ties with MLB.
It was rumored in July that Apple might be looking to add the driving event to its sports programming. The company allegedly bid between $120 million and $150 million a year for access to F1, which lapped the $90 million a year offered by ESPN, which previously had the US rights. The company may also be looking to capitalize on the success of its F1 the Movie project, which Engadget’s Devindra Hardawar found to be an excellent racing film, a flashy summer blockbuster and an ostentatious commercial for Apple in his review.
There’s a new streaming bundle in town. Apple TV and Peacock are teaming up that starts at $15 per month. This will allow access to all original programming from both platforms, in addition to Peacock’s stable of network and cable shows.
This is a mighty fine deal, given that Apple TV recently changed both its and . The platform costs $13 per month now on its own. Peacock starts at $11 per month. In other words, this is a discount of around $9 each month. In this economy, we’ll take any savings we can get.
There’s one caveat here. The $15 price tag is for Peacock with ads. The subscription shoots up to $20 per month for an ad-free version. However, a standalone subscription to ad-free Peacock is $17 on its own. This bundle becomes available on October 20. Additionally, Apple One subscribers will get a 35 percent discount on Peacock Premium Plus plans. It’s always nice when two lonely corporations find friendship, isn’t it?
For the uninitiated, Apple TV is the company’s big-wig streaming platform. It’s primarily known for sci-fi like Severance, For All Mankind and the upcoming Pluribus. The platform is also host to plenty of comedy, like The Studio, Shrinking and Ted Lasso.
Peacock is NBC’s streaming service. It streams old-school network programming like The Office, Grimm and Superstore. The service features a stable of original programming like Poker Face, Twisted Metal and the . The platform also recently premiered a little show called The Paper, which is a spinoff of The Office. Against all odds, this is actually a great little sitcom and a worthy successor to the original.
The first time Rebecca Miller witnessed Martin Scorsese working on set, he seemed edgy.
“Marty’s demeanor was so anxious and nervous and alive,” she recalls. Miller had been living in Rome with her husband, actor Daniel Day-Lewis. The couple were overseas while he filmed in Scorsese’s historical crime epic, Gangs of New York, and a visit to set put the director in a whole new light.
“I remember thinking, ‘My God, this is a man who’s made all these masterpieces, and yet he’s as nervous as if he’s never made a film before.’ And yet it did occur to me later that, in a way, that is part of his secret is he’s so alive. He hasn’t gotten complacent. There’s no part of him that is resting on his laurels. He’s always only as good as… what he’s doing now.”
Miller captures the duality of Scorsese as a living legend and human artist in Mr. Scorsese, her docuseries about the famed director that begins streaming globally on Apple TV on Oct. 17. The five episodes offer an unrestricted look into his entire personal and professional life, scoping in on his extensive private archives and robust filmography. She also captures a number of unprecedented interviews with friends, creative collaborators, and family members. The star-studded lineup includes, among others, Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mick Jagger, Isabella Rossellini, Steven Spielberg, Sharon Stone, Jodie Foster, Paul Schrader, Margot Robbie, Cate Blanchett, longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker and, of course, Scorsese himself.
The Oscar-winning filmmaker in actionCredit: Courtesy Apple TV
After Gangs of New York wrapped, Miller got to know Scorsese more as filmmaking peers. While getting ready to make Personal Velocity — a drama based on the book of the same name that she wrote — she asked for some advice from Scorsese about using voiceover while at his daughter’s first birthday party. “The minute you asked Marty for advice on films, the floodgates open.”
Over the next two decades, Miller and Scorsese didn’t see much of each other, but she continued to screen her films for him, and he would privately pass along his thoughts. Then, as early 2020 set in, she wondered to her producing partner, Damon Cardasis, about making another documentary (her first, 2017’s Arthur Miller: Writer, captured her father).
“The first person that came to mind was Martin Scorsese,” she says. “I was sort of fascinated by the dichotomy of Catholicism and his fascination with violence and how those two things go together… I had a sense that his spiritual life was very key to actually reading his films.”
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Leonardo DiCaprio and
Scorsese on the set of The AviatorCredit: Brigitte Lacombe
She inquired with Scorsese’s documentary producing partner Margaret Bodde if someone was already working on a documentary about him. No one was, and one letter and a meeting later, the documentary was underway. “That was [my] last hug of anyone before the pandemic,” Miller remembers. “That’s why some of our interviews are outside.”
From the start of COVID-19 to 2025, Miller and her team went to work. She estimates they had at least 200 hours of footage to edit down, about 20 hours of which was just Scorsese.
Five hours into interviewing Scorsese, he was only at 12 years old in his life story. It became clear that the planned two-hour documentary needed a longer runtime. Early on, she interviewed filmmaker Brian De Palma, who warned, “You can’t do it in two hours. There’s no way. Maybe you can get to Taxi Driver.”
Grateful for the flexibility of Apple TV, Miller expanded it from two hours to two parts to five parts, each of which runs about one hour. “His whole nerve center, in a way, as an artist, is in the neighborhood [he grew up in,]” she explains. The Catholicism, the machismo, the moral complexity and violence and crime of his films — it all bubbles to the surface in the examination his Little Italy childhood.
Scorsese spent much
of his childhood indoors due to asthma Credit: Courtesy Apple TV
Scorsese’s exuberant passion for filmmaking is reflected in electrifying needle drops, many courtesy of The Rolling Stones. Sure, the music choice was a technicality: the English rock legends’ songs pepper many of his movies, not to mention he directed their 2008 concert film, Shine a Light. But it also kicks up the pulse of the docuseries.
“He has such a deep, visceral connection to the stones, to The Stones…That was the Holy Grail in terms of music,” Miller says. “It’s an intelligent but very anarchic energy in that music.”
Given the richness of his life and art, Scorsese is a dream documentary subject. But what made the process run smoothly was his openness. No topic goes untouched, from filmmaking fun and his love for cinema to religion, drugs, relationship turbulence and career peaks and valleys.
“He was so wanting to say things in a new way,” Miller notes. “He really made such an effort. Because, of course, he’s somebody that has spoken endlessly and people know a lot about him, but he was just trying to create a new angle or a new way of saying something that he hadn’t quite said, and he was very, very considerate in that way.”
“I really did follow Marty in these interviews,” she adds. “I think the fact that I wasn’t coming out with an agenda actually helped him to probably be open. And after all, he’s probably the most, one of the most, honest filmmakers in existence.”
Apple TV released the official trailer for Palm RoyaleSeason 2, the Emmy Award-nominated comedy series.
Kristen Wiig stars as Maxine Dellacorte, an underdog who attempts to enter the ruthless world of Palm Beach high society.
The official synopsis reads, “As Maxine attempts to cross that impermeable line between the haves and the have-nots, Palm Royale asks the same question that still baffles us today: How much of yourself are you willing to sacrifice to get what someone else has?”
“Palm Beach is no longer safe.” After a scandalous public breakdown, Maxine is deemed a social pariah. It will be an uphill battle to prove she belongs, but Maxine is determined to rule the town.
“Along the way, she will uncover untold truths and finally understand what this town is truly built on . . . secrets, lies, and the occasional felony,” the Season 2 logline reads.
Besides Wiig, Palm Royale Season 2 stars Laura Dern, Allison Janney, Ricky Martin, Carol Burnett, Josh Lucas, Leslie Bibb, Amber Chardae Robinson, Mindy Cohn, Julia Duffy, Kaia Gerber, Claudia Ferri, Jason Canela, Jordan Bridges, James Urbaniak, Roberto Sanchez, Rick Cosnett, and Ryan Dorsey.
John Stamos and Patti LuPone headline the list of guest stars, which also includes Vicki Lawrence and Matt Rogers.
Abe Sylvia is Palm Royale’s writer, executive producer, and showrunner. Executive producers include Wiig, Dern, Jayme Lemons, and Katie O’Connell Marsh. The series hails from Apple Studios.
Released in March 2024, Palm Royale Season 1 garnered 11 Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Comedy Series and acting nods for Wiig and Burnett. The show won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music.
Palm Royale Season 2 premieres with one episode on Wednesday, November 12, 2025. One episode will stream weekly on Apple TV until January 14, 2026.
Inside Furioza — The sequel to the 2021 crime drama Furioza has a new kingpin taking hold of the Polish underworld, with plans to extend its reach into other countries. At press time, a confused Stephen Miller had ordered the arrest of Doda. (Netflix)
Loot — Molly and Arthur are stranded on a desert island at the top of the long-awaited Season 3, which is finally hitting screens after a hiatus of nearly a year and a half. See, for a while there, it looked as if star Maya Rudolph was going to be busy playing Kamala Harris. Isn’t it great when we can be two previews into one of these things and you already want to put the gun in your mouth? (Apple TV)
Murdaugh: Death in the Family — Jason Clarke plays Alex Murdaugh, the “it” killer of 2023, in a drama series that was announced two months before he even went to trial. What were they going to do if he was acquitted, retcon him as a K-pop demon hunter? (Hulu)
No One Saw Us Leave — The Mexico of the 1960s is the setting for a reality-based drama in which a couple’s divorce becomes needlessly complicated when the husband kidnaps the daughter. That’s a niche market for the lawyers all right, but I understand their billboards are the s***. (Netflix)
Six Kings Slam 2025 — Plant yourself in front of the screen for three days of men’s tennis from Riyadh, but think very carefully: Do you really want to spend that much time in a country even Shane Gillis wouldn’t visit? (Netflix)
Premieres Thursday:
Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy — The humane approach is the modus operandi of an eight-episode dramatization that’s so determined to avoid exploitation it doesn’t reenact a single one of the infamous Gacy’s murders — or even show his victims interacting with him in any way whatsoever. As Derek Smalls would say, that’s a cozy 10 minutes. (Peacock)
The Diplomat — As Season 3 commences, the sudden death of the American president elevates a psychopathic vice president into the top job. Listen, we’d take it. (Netflix)
Romantics Anonymous — A chocolatier who has trouble making eye contact falls in love with a customer who doesn’t like touching people. Which explains why their meet cute is her throwing a bag of truffles at his head and missing by a mile. (Netflix)
Starting 5 — The quintet of NBA greats profiled in Season 2 includes James Harden, No. 1 point guard for the Los Angeles Clippers. Or as I knew him until five minutes ago, that guy whose side eye I use to respond to every one of James Woods’ tweets. (Netflix)
“The Perfect Neighbor” on Netflix Credit: courtesy Netflix
Premieres Friday:
27 Nights — The life of Argentinian artist and writer Natalia Kohen inspired this probing drama about a woman whose daughters have her committed, even though what looks like mental illness on her part might simply be eccentricity. It’s more complicated than it seems, because she was born four decades too early for the Tylenol defense. (Netflix)
Good News — A black-comic take on the 1970 hijacking of a Japanese commercial flight, with the authorities exploring a bunch of zany strategies to restore order. Bright idea No. 1 is having Johnny in the control tower just unplug everything. (Netflix)
Hollywood Hustler: Glitz, Glam, Scam — Former friends and even his ex-wife explain how they were taken in by Zach Horwitz, a struggling actor who fraudulently claimed to hold the foreign distribution rights to various big Hollywood films. Investors were seduced by fake contracts with Netflix and HBO — documents that were later ruled phonies because they didn’t include a single notification of coming subscription hikes. (Prime Video)
Mr. Scorsese — Fellow filmmaker Rebecca Miller salutes the great Martin Scorsese with a five-part documentary that chronicles the great man’s life and work. Follow his entire creative evolution, from his early days as a student filmmaker at NYU to his later years as Kevin Feige’s No. 1 troll. Cinema! (Apple TV)
The Perfect Neighbor — Bodycam footage is used almost exclusively to document the racial tensions that culminated in a 2023 shooting in Ocala. Or you could just plug your Nextdoor feed into Google Photos and hit “animate.” (Netflix)
She Walks in Darkness — A Spanish secret agent risks her life to spend years undercover with the terrorist group known as ETA. But how dangerous can they be if they’re never totally sure when they’re going to get anywhere? (Netflix)
The Thaw Season 3 — The six-episode third season of the Polish crime drama has widowed detective Katarzyna Zawieja (Katarzyna Wajda) investigating a drug ring run entirely by teenagers. Well, it’s a better return than they used to get from delivering Gritski, Poland’s family newspaper. (HBO Max)
Turn of the Tide Season 2 — Eduardo returns to his Azores neighborhood three months after the events of Season 1, to find the local drug trade controlled by a new and intimidating enemy. Careful, Eduardo! Those Polish teenagers will f*** you up! (Netflix)
Turn of the Tide: The Surreal Story of Rabo de Peixe — Learn the true story behind today’s returning crime drama in an accompanying documentary that shows how a humble fisherman’s life was turned upside down by the washing ashore of a massive shipment of cocaine. For one thing, he sure could gut those fish faster! (Netflix)
The Twits — This animated adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book about “the meanest, smelliest, nastiest people in the world” features new songs by David Byrne. “No comment,” say Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz and Jerry Harrison. (Netflix)
Premieres Sunday:
Fangoria Chainsaw Awards — Presenters in the 27th annual tribute to the best in horror cinema will include Ryan Coogler and GWAR. Expect the state of the art in bloody decapitations. And I’m sure GWAR have something fun planned as well. (Shudder)
Premieres Tuesday:
Who Killed the Montreal Expos? — Two decades later, Canada is still wondering how it lost its first MLB team to Washington, D.C. Which only goes to show that country is ahead of us in everything, because America is currently wondering how it lost everything to Washington, D.C. (Netflix)
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Plus everything else debuting on Netflix, HBO Max, Peacock and the rest
Plus everything else debuting this week on Prime Video, Shudder, AMC+ and the rest
Plus: Jessica Chastain in ‘The Savant,’ Brett Goldstein in ‘All of You’ and everything else premiering on streaming
I’m usually not a fan of companies rebranding themselves or their products unless there’s a compelling reason. And, there is almost never a compelling reason. Sure, inside the company, there are people who think there is a compelling reason, and agencies that bill by the hour will sell you on a number of reasons they assure you are compelling. But of the time its a waste of money, time, and brand equity.
I typically would argue that there are only three reasons compelling enough to go through the effort: your brand is associated with something negative, your brand is confusing, or you have significantly changed something about your product or company. Anything else just seems like vanity.
Then, Apple rebranded its streaming service this week by dropping the “+” and people lost their minds. That’s mostly because Apple now has three things that all have the same name, which would normally be very bad.
I wrote earlier this week that I actually think it’s really smart, and that it was sending a message. Then, Eddy Cue, who oversees Apple’s services businesses, was a guest on The Town podcast. When host Matt Belloni asked him why the company made the change, Cue’s answer was short enough to fit on a sticky note:
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“We just decided.”
That’s not actually one of the three reasons I listed above, but it turns out Apple’s reason was better than I expected. It comes down to maybe the simplest reason of all: when everyone is already calling your product something, just use that.
Cue went on to explain that the “+” made sense when Apple first launched the service because the company used it for other paid offerings—iCloud+, News+, Fitness+. But over time, it became clear that almost no one said “Apple TV Plus.” They just said “Apple TV.”
So Apple stopped fighting what everyone was already doing and changed the name.
In a way, Cue was admitting that Apple overthought it the first time. He didn’t call it a mistake, but I think you can make the case that it was. The “+” never added anything. It didn’t make the service more premium or make people more likely to subscribe. If anything, it added confusion. Apple’s solution is smart because it didn’t try to invent another name—it just went with the one everyone was already using.
That’s the lesson here. Most companies try to defend bad branding decisions long after everyone else has moved on. They form committees and hire agencies to convince people that what they said before still makes sense. Apple didn’t do that. It just changed it.
If you make a mistake, fix it. Honestly, that’s the part I love most because this isn’t the kind of rebrand companies usually make. Apple didn’t change the name because people disliked it, or because the business changed. It changed it because customers had already decided what they were going to call it—and Apple finally caught up.
Cue also brushed aside the idea that the new name might cause confusion. Apple TV is now the name of the hardware, the app, and the service. Most companies would panic at that. Apple didn’t. The truth is, consumers already figured it out. You can watch Apple TV on your Apple TV using the Apple TV app. It’s absurd when you say it out loud, but everyone understands what it means.
Rebrands are usually about changing perception. This one is about aligning with reality. Apple looked at how the world already talked about its product and decided to meet people there
Maybe the real lesson is that sometimes the best branding strategy is to stop trying so hard. It’s not the kind of move most companies would make, but it’s the kind of move only Apple can pull off—because when you already own the name everyone’s using, you might as well use it too.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
