S tv and movie executives love a airplane crash. From Misplaced to Denzel Washington’s 2012 movie Flight, Sully to Con Air. And later this month, viewers can line as much as watch Gerard Butler try and land a failing plane in a warzone within the imaginatively-named thriller Airplane.
Which brings me to Pricey Edward. As an aerophobe myself, let me affirm that if the thought of getting on a airplane fills anyone with the jitters, then that is completely not the present to look at.
This new sequence from AppleTV+ makes an attempt to inform the story of Edward, a boy who miraculously survives a airplane crash that kills the remainder of his household.
As he makes an attempt to piece his life again collectively, the present (which relies on a ebook of the identical title) expands to inform the tales of different individuals whose lives have been affected by the catastrophe and charts their path to therapeutic.
Connie Britton and Audrey Corsa in Pricey Edward
/ AppleTV+That’s the thought, anyway. However I struggled to make it by way of the primary episode which had a full 50-minutes minutes of a airplane crashing (interspersed with snapshots of the lives of these about to die), adopted by 10 minutes of a person selecting his manner by way of the particles, full with faux our bodies within the rubble.
Ploughing on, which was robust, didn’t show rewarding. This present from Jason Katims, who has labored on sequence together with Parenthood and Friday Evening Lights, whereas admirable in its ambition, typically stumbles underneath the load of all its constituent plotlines, asking readers to spend money on characters we meet and re-meet all too briefly.
Which is a disgrace, as a result of so lots of its actors are so good. Connie Britton is a delight as scatty housewife Dee Dee; Taylor Schilling shines because the frazzled Lacey (Edward’s aunt), whose psychological well being is on the decline after 9 years of attempting and failing to get pregnant. I significantly favored Adriana, a political assistant to her Congresswoman grandmother (who dies within the crash), performed by Anna Uzele with an air of weary willpower.
As a substitute of spending an excessive amount of time with any of them individually, we do find yourself for lengthy durations at a assist group for victims of the crash (attended, conveniently, by no person besides the six major characters) the place group hugs and awkward meet-cutes are the order of the day.
The emotional assist group
/ AppleTV+Edward’s personal story additionally suffers consequently. Regardless of being the central character of the present, he finally ends up being much less of a boy and extra of a cipher: an individual onto whom individuals across the nation can mission their grief and hopes, to whom they ship numerous letters (therefore the present’s title).
It’s fairly corny stuff, and all too typically it lapses into clichéd character beats that lean fairly too closely on a swelling musical rating to conjure any sense of emotion within the viewer. Dee Dee finds out that her husband wasn’t being totally trustworthy about his life or funds; Lacey learns to embrace a unique type of motherhood than the one she had initially envisaged. As for Edward, he talks to his useless brother for 2 episodes earlier than being bizarrely being advised the reality in a grocery store by a stranger.
There are glimmers of sunshine in Pricey Edward; moments when the plot clicks or two characters expertise a second of connection that makes it really feel virtually value it. However for probably the most half, it’s a slow-burn slog: watch at your peril.
Pricey Edward is streaming now on AppleTV+
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