First Look: AppleTV Plus' Original TV Shows, Including 'The Morning Show' And 'Amazing Stories'
On Monday, Apple unveiled its many original movies and TV shows set to debut on its forthcoming streaming service, Apple TV+. The announcement of its original titles came during Apple's buzzy "Show Time" event, which gave an early peek at the tech company's various new products as well as the highly anticipated streaming service that will mark Apple's entry into the crowded streaming platform market. Star-studded titles and ambitious series were the order of the day with the Apple streaming service original titles, which were showcased in a glossy sizzle reel.
You can watch the sizzle reel here:
And here's what you need to know about the shows featured in that montage.
Amazing Stories
"My first encounter with science-fiction came from an anthology magazine called Amazing Stories," Steven Spielberg said as he launched into a story of how when he was a 5-year-old, he was entranced with the stories in the magazine that his father would read to him.
"Kids enter life with a prodigious capacity for amazement," Spielberg said, and he and his Amblin team are devoted to bringing that amazement to a new generation of kids with their reboot of Amazing Stories, the science fiction anthology series executive produced by Spielberg.
The Morning Show
Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston, and Steve Carrell got on stage to introduce The Morning Show, a dramedy about the "high stakes world" of morning TV.
"The Morning Show is a high velocity thrill ride in which we pose questions without easy answers and that will shine a light on current issues," Witherspoon, who is executive producing the series, described. Aniston makes her highly anticipated return to TV as one of the two ambitious female characters at the center of the story. And one "prominent male character," Carrell added.
See
Created and written by Serenity director Steven Knight and directed by The Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence, See stars Jason Momoa and Alfre Woodard in a sci-fi series set in a future when the human race has lost the sense of sight.
"The human race has existed so long without sight it's disputed if such a thing existed," Momoa said in the presentation at Apple's Show Time event alongside Woodard, who added that the series is rife with "brave queens, thrilling adventures" and other high fantasy elements in a unique world designed for a human race without sight.
Little America
"When people defend immigrants, they focus on the exceptionality of immigrants. Little America is an anthology series inspired by the true stories of immigrants in the U.S. These are human stories that feature immigrants," Kumail Nanjiani said in his presentation of Little America, an immigrant-centric anthology series from the creators of Master of None.
Lee Eisenberg (The Office) and Alan Yang (Master of None) are the showrunners for the series, which will feature a writers and directors room of either immigrants or children of immigrants.
"We hope Little America will help viewers understand that there is no such thing as the other, there is only us," Nanjiani concluded.
Helpsters
From the Sesame Street Workshop comes a new children's education series dedicated to teach kids how to code. Helpsters won't feature any familiar Sesame Street characters — though Big Bird did get on stage to introduce the series — but will star the brand new puppet, Cody, who "loves helping people."
Little Voice
This series is for everyone "looking for a dream," J.J. Abrams said of Little Voice, which he developed alongside Waitress composer Sara Bareilles. Based on Bareilles' own experiences as a struggling singer-songwriter, Little Voice will follow a "promising, flawed woman" living in New York around a "vibrant community of musicians, friends, and soul mates."
"The theme song says it all," Bareilles said before launching into a performance of "Little Voice," a wistful piano ballad about, yes, finding your voice.
Oprah Winfrey Documentaries
Oprah Winfrey has signed a multi-year partnership to produce original content for Apple and revealed two of those projects will be documentaries diving into powerful and important subjects. The first, Toxic Labor, will delve into sexual assault and the current movement surrounding it while the second is an untitled documentary about mental health and how it's "devastating lives daily across the globe," Winfrey said somberly on stage.
But on a lighter note, Winfrey noted that one of her non-film projects will be a live "book club" that will "unite us with stories that remind us that everyone...looks up at the same sky." The yet to be titled book club will be held on Apple devices and stream live across borders and continents.
Here are the rest of the projects that have been confirmed thus far, some of which we got a glimpse of in the sizzle reel which you can watch here.
Apple TV+ and these upcoming series will debut sometime in the fall 2019.