Say what you like about the TV landscape, you can't deny there's a lot of it about. There's a non-stop fountain of high-quality TV offerings gushing from the mountainside, all you have to do is hold out your bucket to catch it (and pay around seven or eight quid a month).
Netflix was the frontrunner and market leader, but there's also Amazon's Prime Video, Disney+ (home of Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars), Paramount+ (where Top Gun: Maverick resides), and a bunch of others. One of the strongest services is AppleTV+, which is presumably what you're here to learn about.
Apple have ploughed plenty of money into their streaming service, and it shows in the quality of the content.
There are a lot of great shows on Apple TV+, which punches significantly above its weight given its relatively small content list (compared with Netflix, Disney+ and Prime Video – quantity, it must be remembered, doesn't always beat quality).
For lovers of sharp-tongued comedy with a warm heart, there's the breakout hit of the service, Ted Lasso. Jason Sudeikis stars as the US sports coach of the title, brought in to rescue the languishing Richmond FC.
If mind-bending (yet incredibly, deliberately drab) sci-fi fantasy comedy-drama is your bag, then you could try Severance from director Ben Stiller, starring Adam Scott as one of a team of office workers who have voluntarily submitted to a procedure that separates their in-work life from their home life.
Neither side of their personality has any knowledge of what their other half get up to, so the 'outies' get paid without ever having to experience work, while the 'innies' are condemned to perpetual tedium.
There's also Slow Horses, the London-set spy thriller featuring Gary Oldman as leader of a bunch of failed spooks, put out to grass in MI5's backwater office. When a foreign politician's nephew is kidnapped by a far-right gang, the Slow Horses begin to suspect that there's something more sinister going on. Season three arrives in 2023 and there's a fourth promised.
If you want to go darker, you could try Taron Egerton prison drama Black Bird, where he stars as the real-life Jimmy Keene, a convicted drug dealer who made a deal with the FBI to befriend a suspected serial killer in jail to find out where he concealed the bodies of his victims.
On January 27, we'll get Forgetting Sarah Marshall's Jason Segel in comedy Shrinking, in which he plays a grieving psychotherapist who recklessly starts telling his clients the truth, with radical effects on their lives and his. Best of all is Harrison Ford as his boss, who's trying to hide his Parkinson's Disease from his family while berating Segel constantly. It's written by Scrubs' Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein (from out of Ted Lasso) as well as Segel.
Other hits on the Apple roster include time-travel serial-killer thriller The Shining Girls starring Jamie Bell and Elisabeth Moss, Jennifer Aniston's The Morning Show, David Attenborough's Prehistoric Planet and period drama The Essex Serpent, starring Tom Hiddleston and Claire Danes. Want to know more about Apple TV+'s content? Fill your boots.
Is Apple TV free? How much is Apple TV per month?
Well, it is free and it isn't. What we mean to say is that you can watch it free for a while, but there is a subscription fee, as with most streamers. That fee is £6.99/$6.99 per month (up from £4.99/$4.99), which is comparable to the other streamers listed above, if not as competitive as it used to be. There's also no discount for signing up for a full year.
But if you want to try before you buy – or are only really interested in one or two shows that you reckon you can binge fairly swiftly, no judgment here – there are a number of ways to do it.
First, you can opt into Apple's seven-day free trial offer. The first week's free, and if you're not into what you find, then happy days, you cancel and part ways.
If you're a Sky viewer, you can get six months free as a VIP customer.
Another way to do it is to buy some Apple hardware. If you purchase a new iPhone, iPad, iPod touch or Mac, you'll get Apple TV+ free for three months.
Admittedly, you're spending a fair wedge to get the tools, but if you're buying, say, an iPhone 13 anyway, then consider the TV package a bonus at no extra cost.
UK EE customers can get six months free with their plan.
Barclaycard holders – if they've never had Apple TV before – can claim five months free.
Are you with Three? You could get up to a year free! Got a PS4? There's four months right there.
If you're based in the US, you can also get Apple TV+ free for a year with a T-Mobile plan.
If you fancy trying out all of Apple's media services, you can get a month of Apple One (Apple TV+, Apple Music, Apple Arcade, Apple News+) for no money at all, followed by a subscription fee of £14.95 per month.
There's more! If you sign up to Curry's Perks customer loyalty scheme, you can get Apple TV+ free for three months.
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