It's Apple TV+ this week on the podcast, as that's the last place on TV, or at least one of them, that's still taking big creative swings and also releasing episodes serially. Longtime contributor Omar Gallaga joins Neal Pollack this week to discuss two Apple+ shows. The first, Margot's Got Money Troubles, based on a novel by Rufi Thorpe, comes to us from David E. Kelley, who's been making TV for decades. But this show feels fresh and modern thanks to a winning lead performance from Elle Fanning and a nuanced look at the Only Fans universe. The cast, which includes Nick Offerman, Greg Kinnear, Nicole Kidman, and Marcia Gay Harden, is uniformly excellent, but Michelle Pfeiffer steals the show with a late-career master turn as Margot's mother, a performance so fully realized it doesn't even feel like she's acting.

Much more stylized, but no less effective, is Widow's Bay, a new comedy-horror semi-anthology series from comedy writer Katie Dippold, which embraces and deconstructs horror tropes with unabashed delight. It's like the X-Files meets Northern Exposure, with a touch of Twin Peaks and Parks and Recreation. The cast includes Matthew Rhys, Kate O'Flynn, and Stephen Root, and a bevy of monsters and supernatural happenings that bedevils a cursed Massachusetts island. Four episodes in, and Widow's Bay is already a TV legend. Omar and Neal give it their highest recommendation, and no one has better taste than they do.

Enjoy the show!

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