Review: The Morning Show is back but where's the bickering?

***

Breakfast television in the UK has its moments - Piers Morgan flouncing off Good Morning Britain, and toast-related tantrums (allegedly) on BBC One’s Breakfast.

However, nothing British broadcasters do compares to the fictional goings-on in The Morning Show, one of the biggest hits on Apple TV+ since its 2019 debut. As one character says, the station has survived a rapist anchor and a megalomaniac billionaire, so what’s next? 

Quite a lot, if the opening episode of the fourth series is anything to go by. We rejoin the staff at UBA (now a streaming platform called UBN) in spring 2024, two years after the mega merger.

It has been a bruising stretch for staff, marked by waves of job cuts, and now AI might threaten even more, despite assurances to the contrary. At the press of a button, queen bee anchor Alex (Jennifer Aniston) can speak in 40 languages. The future has arrived.

At UBN, it’s the women who now run the editorial floor, promising some lively office politics, especially from Mia (Karen Pittman), still hungry for the head of news job. 

That said, the biggest ratings magnet is a Joe Rogan-style podcaster who lives to provoke his liberal elite colleagues, Alex especially. Mmm… wonder how that turns out?

Read more

• Great British Bake Off contender shares her moving story
• Best laid plans go awry in Mark Ruffalo thriller
• Ye olde sketch show makes triumphant return
• Rikki Fulton skit stunned Glasgow audiences

For now, there’s a lot of grunt work as we catch up with the main characters. It’s a necessary chore, but it makes for a slow opening to a show that’s best when it hits the ground sprinting. Even the central news story—the defection of an Iranian athlete—feels flat.

In no particular order, the very cool Stella (Greta Lee), with her impeccably trendy wardrobe, has taken over from sly Cory as CEO; Cory (Billy Crudup) is trying to make a movie; eager beaver Chip (Mark Duplass) has a documentary at Cannes; and Bradley (Reese Witherspoon), still under a cloud, is teaching journalism back home in West Virginia.

New additions to the cast include Oscar-winning French actor Marion Cotillard as a board member; Jeremy Irons, another Oscar-winner, as Alex’s law professor father; and Boyd Holbrook as the macho podcaster Brodie.

The often spiky relationship between Alex and Bradley remains front and centre—both Aniston and Witherspoon are executive producers. Though the frenemies reached an uneasy truce at the end of the last series, tension lingers—even more so now that Bradley is returning to boost ratings.

Just as there is no show without Bradley and Alex, the same goes for Cory. Billy Crudup’s character has been a Marmite presence from the start of The Morning Show. Some viewers love his freewheeling, blowhard speeches (he describes his new film as “Chinatown for the post-truth era”), while others use them as a cue to refill the snack bowl. He still has his moments though, and the fallout with Bradley has plenty of potential for skulduggery.

It is the in-fighting that keeps The Morning Show fresh—not debates about the future of media. The sooner it returns to its business as usual, the better.