Apple TV+ today announced a series order for “Hello Tomorrow!,” a new, 10-episode half-hour dramedy that will star Emmy and Critics Choice Award winner Billy Crudup (“The Morning Show”) who will also serve as an executive producer. Jonathan Entwistle (“The End of the F***ing World”) is attached to direct the series, which hails from MRC Television.
Set in a retro-future world, “Hello Tomorrow!” centers around a group of traveling salesmen hawking lunar timeshares. Crudup stars as Jack, a salesman of great talent and ambition, whose unshakeable faith in a brighter tomorrow inspires his coworkers, revitalizes his desperate customers but threatens to leave him dangerously lost in the very dream that sustains him.
“Hello Tomorrow!” is written and created by Amit Bhalla and Lucas Jansen (“Bloodline,” “The Money”). Entwistle, Bhalla, Jansen will also serve as executive producers alongside Crudup. Blake Griffin, Ryan Kalil and Noah Weinstein will executive produce through their banner Mortal Media.
Crudup currently stars in Apple’s “The Morning Show,” which will return for its second season this year, and earned him an Emmy Award and Critics Choice Award, as well as a SAG nomination, for his role as Cory Ellison. The series order also marks another collaboration between Apple and MRC Television, the studio behind upcoming Apple Original series “Shining Girls,” starring Emmy Award winner Elisabeth Moss, based on the best-selling novel by Lauren Beukes and is being adapted for television and executive produced by Silka Luisa; and, the limited series “The Shrink Next Door,” in association with Civic Center Media, which stars Will Ferrell, Paul Rudd, Kathryn Hahn and Casey Wilson, from director Michael Showalter and showrunner Georgia Pritchett.
Apple TV+ is home to award-winning Apple Originals from today’s most imaginative storytellers. Apple TV+ offers premium, compelling drama and comedy series, feature films, groundbreaking documentaries, and kids and family entertainment, and is available to watch across all your favorite screens. After its launch on November 1, 2019, Apple TV+ became the first all-original streaming service to launch around the world, and has premiered more original hits and received more award recognitions faster than any other streaming service. Apple Originals have been honored with 107 wins and 367 awards nominations in just over a year, including Academy Award nominations, SAG Awards, Critics Choice Awards, Critics Choice Documentary Awards, Golden Globe Awards, Daytime and Primetime Emmy Awards, NAACP Image Awards, a Peabody Award and more.
Apple TV+ is available on the Apple TV app in over 100 countries and regions, on over 1 billion screens, including iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, iPod touch, Mac, select Samsung, LG, Sony and VIZIO smart TVs, Amazon Fire TV and Roku devices, Chromecast with Google TV, PlayStation and Xbox consoles, and at
tv.apple.com, for $4.99 per month with a seven-day free trial. For a limited time, customers who purchase a new iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Mac or iPod touch can enjoy one year of Apple TV+ for free. This special offer is good for three months after the first activation of the eligible device.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple TV+ continues to grow its library of impressive, award-winning content!
Dramedy = A comedy that isn’t very funny?
Indeed! I wish people would learn proper English rather than continuing to bastardize the language.
Rant on:
Comedies and Tragedies are the two primary kinds of Dramatic Arts. Technically, a comedy doesn’t necessarily mean it’s laugh-out-loud funny. It means that the play has a positive ending, with the hero prevailing in the end. A tragedy is the opposite. There is no such thing as a Dramedy or a Tragicomedy. Both those weak-minded terms mean nothing.
Perhaps the lack of classic understanding of dramatic genres came with the advent of long works such as novels and television series. Extended works take the time to include scenes running the full gamut of human emotion. It makes sense that reviewers would use the generic term “drama” instead of the more precise tragedy/comedy terms for such works. I fail to see any reason to invent nonsensical hybrid subgenres. There are already many excellent precise subgenres available.
To express that a comedic work is primarily humorous, call it : farce, satire, slapstick, burlesque, parody, stand-up, etc. Or in today’s world, the most prominent comedy subgenre: formulaic snarky schlock with near zero wit and even less character development — the situational comedy / sitcom.
There are tragedies that have a significant amount of humor in them too (“black humor” like Dr. Strangelove or Cyrano de Bergerac), but they tend not to have as great a commercial appeal. Being so difficult to pull off makes these works particularly notable.
Tragedies invariably involve suffering, so domestic, bourgois, and epic struggles essentially divide this category by scale rather than technique. Other than some historic works, Hollywood tends to avoid this half of the drama field like the plague. They literally take tragedies like Les Miserables and twist them around into happy musicals, editing out all but the most superfluous pain and suffering of the original novels from which they were based. But movie buffs like me relish a good film noir or mystery or suspense thriller, which as often as not is simply a sad tragedy with a lot of spice to keep the audience on their toes.
Perhaps Apple (and Amazon, Netflix, etc) would be wise to attempt to do a better job at classifying their productions.
Rant off.