Aniston & Witherspoon Liven the Dull ‘The Morning Show’: Critics

The web series streams on Apple + from 1 November.

Streaming service Apple TV Plus launches on 1 November with a line-up of exclusive shows and films, including three Apple originals, The Morning Show, See and For All Mankind. Starring Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell, web series The Morning Show is inspired by journalist Brian Stelter’s book Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV.

Here’s what critics have to say about the newsroom drama.

“Aniston nails the strained composure of a woman who has long been overlooked and underestimated and has finally decided to take control. You can sense Witherspoon’s giddiness at – nearly two decades after Elle Woods – playing a character who proudly touts her lack of positivity and declares “I’m not a perky person!” and means it. The characters they’re playing in this episode bear minimal resemblance to their initial introductions, but there’s catharsis in the long stretches of shackle-breaking dialogue that sound like things these marquee star-producers have either said or wished they’d said to condescending male authority figures over the years.”

Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter

“The primary draw of ‘The Morning Show’ is seeing Aniston and Witherspoon as co-hosts, cohorts, and maybe even friends. Seeing them do just about anything, together, had to be Apple’s rationale for spending a reported $150 million per season, but stars do not a TV show make – a fact that becomes clearer with each episode, as fleeting speeches about the state of TV news and the hypocrisy of the #MeToo scandal fail to coalesce into a meaningful story.”

Ben Travers; Indiewire

“Taking on a number of provocative topics, including and especially gender issues emanating from the toxic swamp of the breakfast-hour television industry, ‘The Morning Show’ is perpetually on the human side, punting on the questions it itself puts forward in favour of airily treating them as too complicated. It’s early days for the show, whose first three episodes were provided to critics. But it’s hard to imagine that viewers excited by a series that promises to take on so much being satisfied by the exhaustion that bleeds out of the writers’ room onto the screen. The show gives up on its potential before it’s really underway, substituting career machinations for something more nourishing.”

Daniel D’Addario; Variety 

“The role of Bradley, an ambitious, outspoken firebrand, is about as Witherspoonian as it gets, and the actress tears into it with her usual twangy spirit. Carell is put in the unfortunate position in the first three episodes of having to yell and seem anguished almost constantly, for understandable reasons, but he finds a way to instantly convey how entitled Mitch is as well as how likable he must have seemed to the public.” 

Jen Chaney, Vulture