Considering how aggressively Apple highlighted The Morning Show in its marketing over the last year, it clearly intended this star-studded vehicle to do the heavy lifting of making Apple TV+ a premium streaming service that can compete with Netflix, Amazon and Hulu.
In practice, The Morning Show comes off a bit like a harsh Apple critic’s perception of the company’s products. It looks good, no doubt. It’s outrageously expensive, even if we accept an Apple executive’s statement that the show doesn’t actually have a $300 million budget. And yet for all that, The Morning Show’s first three episodes leave the impression that it’s just OK—good, but not deserving of the hype and money that’s been lavished on it.