There’s a lot of anger and shouting in the opening episode of The Morning Show, as well people throwing stuff at each other and someone furiously smashing a TV set with a golf club. But not many laughs. Perhaps it’s just us, but a series set in the intrinsically ludicrous world of US morning television, starring some of the finest comedic actors of our time, seems to promise fun.
As beautifully filmed and lavishly produced as you’d expect of a high-end TV drama.
Instead, The Morning Show is tonally quite intense. Think Aaron Sorkin’s earnest, hour-long drama Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip rather than Tina Fey’s sprightly sitcom 30 Rock. What it does provide is a meaty role for Jennifer Aniston (also an exec producer) as Alex Levy, half of a star presenting duo on a long-running network news show, alongside Steve Carell’s Mitch Kessler. Until, that is, she wakes up one morning to find Kessler is at the centre of a me-too scandal, and he’s summarily fired by the network. At this very same moment, local TV news reporter Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon) is going viral with a rant she unleashed while covering a political demo.
A Witherspoon v Aniston dynamic is clearly being set up, with Witherspoon’s hard-working, aspiring star lined up as a rival to Aniston’s complacent veteran. A tense on-air face-off between the two of them, mutual mistrust simmering below the surface, is the highlight of episode one. But initially, the dramatic jeopardy mostly comes from the sexual impropriety allegations swirling round Mitch and how they impact everyone around him.
It’s as beautifully filmed and lavishly produced as you’d expect of a high-end TV drama, but overall the series doesn’t quite have the bite and brio of, say, Succession. Then again, few TV dramas do. What The Morning Show does have is a spiky topicality and a rip-roaringly good performance by Aniston.