When I told my friends I was watching The Morning Show (Apple TV+), they got the wrong idea and thought I meant This Morning, with Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield. I was going: “The Morning Show is totally incredible, the way it’s shot; they’ve obviously spent a lot of money on it.” And they were like: “I didn’t think Isy watched so much daytime TV!” Then I mentioned Jennifer Aniston was in it, and we realised what had happened.
I started watching it for two reasons. First, I really wanted something that wasn’t to do with a pandemic – not like Chernobyl, which I watched recently but definitely couldn’t watch at the moment. I wanted something that wasn’t about illness, or courage, or strength, in a very grand way, though it is about courage and strength in a smaller, more societal way. The other reason is because early on in this whole situation, I read an article about someone who had had to self-isolate and she said that the show had got her through.
The series centres on a show like Good Morning Britain but in the US. As well as Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, Steve Carell plays a news anchor who has been accused of sexual harassment and is fired from the station, so it is about the fallout from that. It is also about the world of telly and the lies that people tell. The issues that they are dealing with are obviously very serious, but there is a kind of polished element to it that really appeals to me at the moment. I think I feel very safe when I am watching it. It is also really brilliantly written and acted, though it is quite different from the kind of programme that I would normally watch - I usually like heavier or grittier things in an immediate sense, like Doctor Foster or Broadchurch.
With actors like Jennifer Aniston and Steve Carrell, it is brilliant to see them in different roles from the ones they are best known for. I am bowled over by the acting. I really love the American version of The Office which Steve Carrell stars in, and I was thinking: God, I can’t imagine him playing this sex offender. I think what is really interesting is that the programme shows him really wrestling with the aftermath of what has happened. He is also great at being really angry. The chemistry between Witherspoon and Aniston is fantastic, too, although they play very different women; Witherspoon’s character Bradley is a very loose cannon, who leads from her heart, while Alex, Aniston’s character, leads from her head – she is quite a tense character.
I really love seeing bigger names on TV and I feel that now there are so many more channels and streaming services, the gulf between film and TV doesn’t exist like it used to. If a film actor did a TV series even five or 10 years ago, it was such a big deal. Now it feels as if the big Hollywood actors can hop into series such as The Affair (starring Ruth Wilson and Dominic West), which I also love. It is a treat – you feel that you get to know them a bit, because they can do more over those long series. And they are not doing six half-hour episodes of a bad sitcom, they are doing really well-written, high-budget TV for at least an hour an episode. What would be really interesting would be to see them do a really terrible, low budget series and have to share a trailer with other actors.
When we look back on this period, I don’t think we will remember the peaks and the troughs. I think I will just probably justr emember it being hard having the kids in the house, and The Morning Show. Right now, it’s just the tonic.
Isy Suttie is the author of The Actual One, available from guardianbookshop.com.
