'Roar' Review: The New Apple TV Plus Anthology Had So Much Potential
The star-studded feminist fables sometimes feel like something an AI regurgitates after spending too much time on Twitter.
- Over a decade of writing and editing experience
Betty Gilpin as The Woman Who Was Kept on a Shelf, in the Apple TV Plus anthology series Roar.
Apple TV Plus has a new anthology series, streaming April 15, and based on the bevy of familiar faces in the trailer you'd be forgiven for thinking it might become your new favorite show. Roar is yet another Nicole Kidman-backed book adaptation, this time based on Cecelia Ahern's 2019 book of short stories. I should've known as soon as the opening credits played that Roar was going to be more of a self-congratulatory pop hook than a true roar. Not quite a chorus of women vocalizing shared frustration, but something closer to the girl-power swagger of a pink coffee mug that reads, "I am woman, hear me roar." They might as well have used the Katy Perry song. You know, the one that's also called Roar.
Like its source material, each of the show's eight stand-alone episodes, billed by Apple TV Plus as "darkly comic feminist fables," picks up a different metaphor about womanhood and makes it literal: The Woman Who Was Kept on a Shelf (Betty Gilpin) becomes a literal trophy wife. The Woman Who Slowly Disappeared (Issa Rae) literally turns invisible. And so on. (Ahern's stories also include a literal biological clock and a literal heart worn on a literal sleeve, among others.)
The questions raised by each episode title are intriguing, but I've heard most of the answers before: Doctors don't take women's pain seriously; offices don't have adequate space for nursing moms; algorithms aren't optimized for Black skin. Check, check, check.
Read more: Here are the best TV shows and the best movies on Apple TV Plus.
Alison Brie as The Woman Who Solved Her Own Murder.
Roar is more fairy tale than speculative fiction or sci-fi, with some of the fantastical elements woven right into the fabric of each episode's hermetic world. For instance, The Woman Who Returned Her Husband (Meera Syal) has kept a husband warranty slip filed away for 37 years, and brandishes it unceremoniously at the service counter of a Costco-esque warehouse store that also sells husbands. But in other episodes, the women are nearly as surprised by their circumstances as the audience is. The Woman Who Was Fed by a Duck is initially shocked to find a talking duck in the not-so-proverbial dating pond -- though her incredulity decays pretty dang fast. I won't so much spoil as warn you about what happens next: My notes just say, "I hate this."
Apple TV Plus, fresh off the success of original series Severance and a surprise-upset Oscar win for CODA, put all the right chess pieces in place with Roar: The star-studded cast includes Nicole Kidman, Alison Brie, Cynthia Erivo, Daniel Dae Kim, Merritt Weaver, Ego Nwodim and many others who'll send you down an IMDb rabbit hole. The team behind the scenes is just as pedigreed, with GLOW's Carly Mensch and Liz Flahive running the show and Kidman also executive producing. The dollhouse-like set design is as aesthetically pleasing as it is symbolic, and a couple of the titular women wear some pretty fabulous shoes.
But the conceit of the cliche-made-literal never quite takes off, largely because the show doesn't seem all that interested in any of its own inquiries. Or maybe it's because an extended metaphor isn't the same thing as a fully realized story, or that trafficking in cliches is a risky business that sets the bar of original storytelling even higher. Maybe the source material is the problem, because Ahern's stories also seem to mistake consciousness-raising for gender equity and personal empowerment for systemic reform.
Maybe all of the above. Or maybe the show was actually written by a bot that's been exclusively trained on Twitter discourse and workplace sexual harassment training videos.
Cynthia Erivo as The Woman Who Found Bite Marks on Her Skin.
Though Black Mirror once inspired an internet cottage industry of hot takes and think pieces, Roar doesn't give its audience much of anything to talk about at the water cooler. One major problem: Each of the eight title characters is underdeveloped and somewhat anonymous, all the better to summarize within the length of the episode title. The effect is not, as seemingly intended, of an eight-part harmony that encompasses "what it means to be a woman today." Perhaps the series could have used the connective tissue of a frame narrative or some sort of through line character. And each woman's travail gets tied up in a pat bow just as you figure out the rules of her world, like despite Roar's streaming provenance, the runtime took priority over the narrative. It's more vignette than story, premise without plot, an amuse-bouche with no entree.
Another major problem is Roar's novice approach to feminism. Its conclusions aren't just pat, but on the nose and a little hackneyed, and it ends up, at best, regurgitating well-digested talking points, and at worst, excusing what it aims to excoriate. (Somewhere in the middle of that spectrum: It's just not that interesting to watch.)
Nicole Kidman as The Woman Who Ate Photographs.
Because those who've marinated in the same Twitter discourse as the aforementioned AI bot have heard it all before. And those who don't, for instance, describe women as "c** dumpsters" in incel chatrooms (The Woman Who Solved Her Own Murder) or say things like, "I really don't know how you ladies do it!" (The Woman Who Found Bite Marks on Her Skin) can continue to tell themselves they're not part of the problem.
I should've known when I heard the theme music. I should've known when I saw the unabashedly vulval promo art. I should've known when I saw the word "feminist" sandwiched between lines of marketing copy. The Woman Who Watched All 8 Episodes of Roar on Apple TV Plus, Streaming April 15? It doesn't have to be you.