Apple TV Plus launching Friday And picks A Winner With The Morning Show

Apple TV Plus launching Friday And picks A Winner With The Morning Show Apple TV+ makes a star-studded original drama debut with Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston playing news anchor rivals, but the series struggles out of the gate.

The company that brought you the Macintosh computer, iPhone, iPad and iTunes now wants you to turn to it for Apple-branded entertainment. And to get you to sign up for the new Apple TV Plus service, launching Nov. 1, Apple is basically giving away the store.

Billy Crudup doesn’t have the biggest part in The Morning Show, but he has the most entertaining one. As Cory Ellison, a broadcast network entertainment president placed in charge of the news division despite a total lack of experience in the area, Crudup gets to smirk enigmatically as Cory’s underlings struggle to figure out his agenda. And he gets to recite lines like, “Chaos! It’s the new cocaine!” He’s fun to watch, even as it’s unclear to the audience, and possibly to The Morning Show‘s creative team whether he has the first clue what he’s doing, or just a surplus of confidence left over from his last job.

Buy a new Apple hardware product starting with the $199 iPod Touch, and continuing with the iPhone, iPad, Apple TV streaming box or Mac computer and you get one year of service free. Historically, Apple sells more than 250 million of these devices a year, so this will clearly give Apple a massive head start in the "Streaming Wars," where it will compete with Netflix (150 million subscribers), Amazon Prime Video (more than 100 million subscribers) and Hulu (28 million subscribers.)

For at least its first two episodes, The Morning Show, the most star-studded and vaunted offering from the initial offering of Apple TV+ originals, is perhaps the seam-iest drama you'll ever see. One needn't know the show's bumpy creative history rare separate "created by" (Jay Carson) and "developed by" (eventual showrunner Kerry Ehrin) credits give some indication to be aware of the series struggling and floundering to find its focus, tone and attitude toward its main characters.

But can it keep them? Apple is launching Friday with only eight series, a documentary and a talk show, compared with the thousands of titles available on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu.