On the already crowded streaming battlefield, which is only likely to become more busy as traditional broadcasters stung by declining audiences dip their toes deeper into the streaming waters, sometimes taking a backward step is the best way to move forward.
ake the Disney+ method of parcelling out its original series with two episodes at the start, followed by one a week. This is closer to the way everyone used to watch television in the pre-streaming era.
The Mandalorian doesn’t appeal to just hardcore Star Wars fans, either. It has also built up a strong following among people who couldn’t give a Sith about the wider Star Wars universe.
The Disney+ way of doing things completely flies in the face of the Netflix method, which is to drop whole seasons onto the platform at once. This, we were told eight years ago, when the first season of House of Cards landed, would deal a final, fatal blow to the old ways.
It hasn’t quite worked out like that. Weekly television, whether it’s on a terrestrial channel or a streamer, has turned out to be very resilient.
Apple TV+ uses the same one-episode-a-week model as Disney+. Logic suggests that what works well for one streamer should work for another. Again, though, it hasn’t quite worked out like that.
Twenty months on from its launch, Apple TV+ is still struggling to make its mark, still searching for that big breakout hit that will cause people sit up and take notice. So far, its most popular series is Ted Lasso, a nice, pleasant, feelgood comedy, but probably not the kind of thing to make people rush to take out a subscription.
The flagship series that was supposed to announce Apple as a major force in the streaming market was The Morning Show, starring expensive A-listers Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell. But the reviews were just middling.
Apple TV+’s other offerings, which include See, starring Aquaman’s Jason Momoa, the alt-history Space Race saga For All Mankind, Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories reboot, the psychological horror Servant, produced by M Night Shyamalan, and the utterly pointless remake/reworking of The Mosquito Coast, haven’t exactly set the world on fire.
It’s extremely unlikely its latest offering, Mr Corman, which arrived at the weekend, is going to change anything. From the outset, Apple has confused big-name signings with quality (it also has Oprah Winfrey on its books).
Here, the big name in the frame is Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who not only stars as the eponymous character, but also created the series, and has written and directed some of the episodes. I wouldn’t be surprised if he did the daily coffee run for cast and crew as well.
Mr Corman — which, alas, has nothing at all to do with the great B-movie producer and director Roger Corman — is billed as a comedy-drama. Frankly, you’d have a better chance of locating a laugh in a funeral home. As drama, the first two episodes (another arrives on Friday) are as inert as an embalmed corpse.
Gordon-Levitt plays a sad-sack called Josh Corman, whose heart has been broken and dreams of musical stardom shattered.
Instead of playing to stadiums full of adoring fans, he’s teaching a bunch of 11-year-old kids.
Josh insists he loves his job and considers himself a lucky, privileged man, yet he can’t stop moaning about how his life amounts to nothing.
He moans to his flatmate Victor (Arturo Castro). He moans to his mother (Debra Winger).
He stares into space. He has an anxiety attack.
He noodles around on his keyboard and guitar. He hooks up in a bar with a not very pleasant woman and later he, let’s say, fails to rise to the occasion, which of course makes him more miserable than before.
Occasionally, he’ll lose himself in a bit of a fantasy sequence.
The character is drowning in ennui and millennial angst. After a while, you feel like you’re drowning along with him.
Anyone who buys an Apple device gets Apple TV+ free for a year. If it keeps turning out series like Mr Corman, how many will be happy to pay for it when the time comes?