‘The Studio’ Review: AppleTV+’s Best Comedy

Provision Disclaimer: AppleTV+ provided me with all episodes of The Studio in order to complete this review.

Ahead of the sixth episode of The Studio, from Seth Rogen and AppleTV+, I wanted to take time to really dig into why this show works as well as it does. From a call sheet that reads like an Oscars’ afterparty guest list, to its incredible technical prowess, this is as good a production about Hollywood as there’s ever been.

WHAT IS THE STUDIO ABOUT?

Continental Studios, the fictional house behind upcoming hits such as Kool-Aid, has entered this production season with a bit of a shakeup: its head of film, Patty Leigh (Catherine O’Hara), has just been fired and replaced by Matt Remick (Seth Rogen). Remick is a cinephile who wants to make movies that are hard-hitting, battling against corporate demands of optimizing the bottom line, at a time when Hollywood is at its most vulnerable. Post-Covid, post-strikes, he has to contend with the newest evolution of IP movies: that they can literally be based on anything, including Kool-Aid.

Each episode tackles a different dimension of studio filmmaking. Episode 2, “The Oner”, you may have heard is shot entirely in one take whilst also satirizing directors (in this instance, Sarah Polley) who rely on that specific technique in order to bring some pseudo-gravitas to their project. The other episodes deal with things like reshoots, featuring a highly caricatured Olivia Wilde, and one upcoming one titled “Casting” is the fallout from executives trying their hardest to be politically correct.

The Studio is building toward tentpoles in the cinematic calendar; the Golden Globes, Comic-Con and CinemaCon; but it isn’t an extremely serialized show. It manages to balance some recurring elements and plotlines with one-off stories that work incredibly well in the context of this show. From a narrative perspective, that’s already a Herculean undertaking that many series of this aimed prestige can’t fulfill, but The Studio does that whilst being one of the most stylish shows on streaming right now.

HOW IS THE STUDIO FILMED?

Aside from Episode 2, shot all in one take, every other episode of The Studio is constructed of multiple scenes – each filmed in one take. This has two effects. As a viewer, you’re engrossed in a real-time quasi-peek behind the curtains of a movie studio, able to see just how quickly decisions get made and (more importantly) why those decisions were made at the time. As a critic, or someone with even the faintest interest in filmmaking, it’s fascinating to observe the level of craftsmanship that goes into developing each scene.

In the glossary of words people use to show they’re into filmmaking, “blocking” would be a Tier 2 word in the sense that it’s a technical term that refers to the mechanics behind positioning actors in 3D space in order to achieve a specific shot. It happens all the time in superhero movies, when characters walk in a zig-zag so there’s a cool shot for the trailer and the movie can show off its expensive cast without covering anyone’s face. For The Studio, blocking is critical to how shots are developed and navigated. Characters will often move around an office building, drive places, or even have full blown arguments that place focus on the right characters at the right time, without a single cut.

To describe The Studio as “cinematic” seems to undermine the really solid contributions to videography that television has produced, and there’s no way that this type of story could be told through a movie or two. This is another league of prestige television that deserves its own category.

SO, IS THE STUDIO ACTUALLY GOOD?

If it wasn’t obvious, I think The Studio is a fantastic show that manages to strike at an incredibly relevant time for the industry. Unlike HBO’s The Franchise, which was too hyper-focused on satirizing the superhero genre at a time when those movies were falling out of favor with the general public anyway, The Studio‘s bird’s eye approach to constructing its narrative allows it to be nimble and that nimbleness allows it to be relevant and (barring another strike or pandemic) timeless.

New episodes of The Studio air on AppleTV+ every Wednesday.