Morning Wars review: It’s worse than terrible, it’s frustrating

When Apple announced it was going into the streaming game in 2019, the centrepiece of its slate was Morning Wars (known was The Morning Show everywhere else in the world).

At the time, it was splashy. All those stars (Jennifer Aniston! Reese Witherspoon! Steve Carell!) and it promised ripped-from-the-headlines resonance with a story about a high-profile breakfast TV anchor who is exposed for sexual misconduct a la Matt Lauer.

Carell’s character, Mitch Kessler, even had the Lauer button, which automatically closed his dressing room door.

But the choice to hew it so closely to real-world events, folding into its onscreen news cycle everything we’ve already lived through, is also the albatross that has hung around Morning Wars’ neck all these years later.

The whole second season, released in 2021, was set in the months before the COVID outbreak, with the forthcoming pandemic looming in almost every scene. It made for resentful watching. The third season threaded the January 6 insurrection through its episodes. You rolled your eyes just now, didn’t you?

It’s not just that there is little appetite to relive through deeply unpleasant moments from our very recent history, it’s also that Morning Wars doesn’t have any insights to add to how those experiences have shaped us. It’s a retread, not a conversation.

Returning with its fourth season this week, the timeline kicks off at the start of 2024, so there are copious references to the upcoming US presidential election – Alex (Aniston) trying to secure an interview with Joe Biden is an unwelcome plot point.

An early episode features the show-within-the-show breaking to live coverage of that Boeing plane whose door blew off mid-air. The editing of that sequence was actually tight, but any suspense it was going for was dissipated by the fact we know they landed safely.

If it hadn’t married itself at the start to this approach and had invented fictional news instead, Morning Wars would be at least 20 per cent less irritating. The shows that have reflected on actual events well – South Park, The Good Fight – turned it around fast (Morning Wars is 18 months behind everything) and had something to say.

The glossy series continues to be one of the most confounding shows on streaming. How can something with so many excellent actors be so, so, so terrible? Worse than terrible, it’s frustrating.

Carell was written out of the series after the second season but the show has drawn on the immense talents of Billy Crudup, Karen Pittman, Mark Duplass, Julianna Margulies, Jon Hamm, Greta Lee, Marcia Gay Harden, Holland Taylor, Tig Notaro and, this year, adds Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons, William Jackson Harper and Boyd Holbrook to its roster.

You have to wonder if any of these actors have seen the show they’ve signed up to. There have been occasional moments that shine through – that hacking episode last season was actually brilliant – but there’s little else to suggest that this production is deserving of their (or our) energy.

This season, Alex Levy is now bedded on the executive floors, trying to balance her instincts and ethics as a journalist while being driven by profit and loss statements. Cory Ellison (Crudup) is trying to relaunch his movie producing career and decides to use his old connections for a deal. Mia Jordan (Pittman) wants the head of news job, but finds obstacles in her way.

Stella Bak (Lee), who took over the CEO job from Cory is pushing AI, and has a new work wife in Celine Dumont (Cotillard), the head of the board and definitely not to be trusted.

And then there’s Bradley Jackson (Witherspoon). Goddamn Bradley Jackson, the most annoying character that was not only miscast from the very start (sorry, Reese), but someone the series has clearly never really known what to do with.

Morning Wars puts Bradley in one extreme situation after another and has her always making the worst choice, and then continues to sell the lie to the audience that she is somehow still a hero – a flawed one but ultimately one who acts on principle?

It’s total bullsh-t. Bradley is legitimately a bad person and the fact Morning Wars keeps insisting she’s not feels like a slap in the face. A fifth season was announced this morning and there is no indication Witherspoon’s Bradley isn’t returning for a further chapter – woe is all of us.

Nine out of season four’s 10 episodes were made available for review, and every instalment inspires waves of visceral exasperation.

Dialing up the soap even more, no one ever seems to behave how real people would. Everything is arch, everything is melodramatic. It only plays one note, which is just noise, not music.

Morning Wars season four is streaming on Apple TV+