12 Apple TV+ Shows To Watch At Launch and During the Next Year

Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's talk about Apple TV+.

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So Apple TV+ is Apple's new streaming TV service set to launch on November 1. It's going to compete with existing services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and other new comers like HBO Max and Disney+. Now it's going to include TV shows and movies. The TV shows include a variety of things like some kid shows and non-fiction stuff. But for their launch there are four main TV shows that everybody is going to be talking about. Let's talk about those and some of the most interesting shows that should be coming out next year as well.

So one of the shows launching November 1 is called See and stars Jason Momoa in a post apocalyptic world where most of the population has been killed off by a plague and the survivors are all blind. It's pretty far in the future and what happens, to start the story off, is children are born who have the ability to see. Not everybody is thrilled about that because some equate sight with all the ills that brought society down in the first place. The reviews have been pretty mixed and actually the reviews of all of these shows have been mixed. I'm not a big fan of TV and movie reviews because I think it's all very subjective. One person can really enjoy a show and another person can just hate it. So having one reviewer give their opinion to me isn't that valuable. This is an interesting enough premise to have me watch the first few episodes and judge for myself like with all the rest of these shows.

Perhaps the show that has gotten the most attention is called The Morning Show and for good reason because it has three huge stars in it, Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, and Steve Carell. Now you would think that with the three of them it would be a comedy but it's actually a drama, behind the scene stuff, of a TV morning show. I'm not usually a fan of dramas but I'm going to give this one a look. The reviews really have been very mixed and it looks like the show had a lot of trouble getting produced so it will be interesting to see what's there.

There is a comedy in this group of four shows. It's called Dickinson. It's a look at the early life of Emily Dickinson. It stars Hailee Steinfeld. It's interesting because it's going to use modern language for telling a period piece. Of course it's going to be highly fictionalized but still based on real life events.

Now the most interesting show to me of the initial four is For All Mankind. This show sounds the most interesting to me because it's alternate history. I love alternate histories. For All Mankind the Soviet Union won the race to the moon but NASA isn't giving up and they're going to try and put the first woman on the moon and then continue the space race to further goals than that. This is the one getting the most positive reviews and it's from the creator of Battlestar Galactia and Outlander. 

As a matter of fact all these shows are produced by TV veterans with veteran studios behind them. That's an important thing to look at here. All of these shows are created by TV professionals. It's not like Apple is making these shows right next door to where they're building MacBooks or something. These are all TV shows that probably would have found homes in other places like HBO or Netflix or somewhere if Apple hadn't gone and bought them or produced them. So to think that Apple is now making TV shows and Tim Cook is there making notes on scripts that isn't really true. These shows are being made just like all the other TV shows out there. It's just Apple has bought the rights to them or is providing the production money for them so they can be on Apple TV+ rather than another service. So for that reason I don't really expect these shows to be that much different, either better or worse, than the stuff that you see on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. 

Now of these four shows three of them are going to give us the first three episodes on November 1. Only Dickinson is going to be put all there at once for us to binge watch. It looks like, then, Apple is going to release one episode per week after those initial three. So it's kind of a middle ground between how Netflix does it and how other networks do it.

Now coming up later this year we know we're getting a few new shows. For instance on December 6 we're getting one called Truth Be Told. It stars Octavia Spencer and it's a really interesting premise. She's a podcaster. One of those true crime podcasters who tries to solve murders and put bad guys behind bars. She is looking into a case where she actually helped convict a murderer. It turns out he may actually not be the murderer and that role is played by Aaron Paul. So this looks this is going to be a really interesting crime drama. 

There's also a show we don't know much about. It's called Servant and it's from M. Night Shyamalan. So we kind of know it's going to be creepy and maybe supernatural because of that. But he's not actually running the show. He's just the producer. This will be out soon on November 28 but we don't have a trailer or much information about it yet. Another show we're pretty sure we're getting this year is called Mythic Quest. It's from two of the  guys behind It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. So you know it's going to be basically a comedy but this time it's going to be about a game development studio. One that's running some sort of massively multi player online game.

Now there's been a whole bunch of other shows that have been rumored or announced that we'll probably see next year. Some of these I'm really excited about. For instance there's going to be a reboot of Amazing Stories and Steven Spielberg is behind it. So we're going to get ten episodes of that. I'm a big science fiction fan so I'm thrilled to hear that finally Isaac Asimov's Foundation series is finally going to be made into a TV series. The creators of this show have been trying to get it done for a long time and Apple TV is now behind it. There's also going to be a new TV series based on the The book The Mosquito Coast. What's interesting about this series is it's going to star Justin Theroux who is the nephew of Paul Theroux, the author of the book.

Now a really big series is going to be Masters of the Air. This is going to be the third installment of the Band of Brothers series of shows. Remember there was Band of Brothers and The Pacific. Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg were behind those. So they've been wanting to make this third series about bomber crews in World War II Europe and Apple TV is going to be bringing it to us rather than HBO.

Probably the thing I'm most excited about is a TV series based on Time Bandits. It's not going to be made by Terry Gilliam but he is a producer. So there will be some influence there. But I'm really excited to see what that's about.

So to watch Apple TV+ you can do it on your Mac using Catalina and the TV app. You can do it in iOS 13 on your iPhone or your iPad. Of course you can do it on your Apple TV. Even older Apple TV devices like the third generation and probably even the second generation Apple TV will allow you to watch these shows. Now Apple TV+ is a subscription service. It's set at $5.00 a month and there's a seven day free trial. But you get a year free if you've recently bought an Apple device. So after the announcement of Apple TV in September, from that point on if you've bought one of the new iPhones for instance, you get a one year subscription to Apple TV+ for free.  You could also watch Apple TV if you've got some other devices like Roku boxes. Some of the newer Samsung TVs and other smart TVs they've got an Apple TV app now and you can get that app and then watch the Apple TV+ service. So you can get your free subscription with a new device and then watch across all these different devices as long as you're logged in to the same Apple ID.

Which of these shows are you most excited about? Let me know in the Comments below.