‘Hello Tomorrow!’ Season One Review – Great Acting And Production Design Swallowed By An Underwritten Narrative

Created By: Amit Bhalla, Lucas Jansen

Starring: Billy Crudup, Haneefah Wood, Nicholas Podany, Alison Pill, Hank Azaria, Dewshane Williams

Plot Summary: In a retro-futuristic world, charismatic salesman Jack Billings leads a team of fellow sales associates determined to revitalize their customers’ lives by hawking timeshares on the moon.

AppleTV+ has had an interesting track record when it comes to signature programming that drives subscriptions. They struck early gold with shows like Ted Lasso and Servant. More recently, they have added the wonderfully offbeat Shrinking and the Lynchian nightmare that is Severance as the latest buzz-worthy television outing. Yet, for every Ted Lasso there seem to be projects that just kind of either fall short or never catch on with audiences. Lately, I’ve had the honor of covering a bunch of Apple productions, and I have to say, I never had a complaint thus far. Hell, I quite enjoyed Maya Rudolph’s series Loot, which oddly didn’t get much love from the critics.

When I heard the plot of Hello Tomorrow!, I knew it would be at the very least an interesting watch. When I heard who had been cast, well, that sealed the deal for me. Sadly, I have to agree with the critics on this one, with this being a mixed bag series at best. Credit where it is due, this series at least looks incredible. There is so much detail in crafting this cotton candy colored mid-century modern with a kick of retro futurism. Everything is so extremely well thought out from every inch of the production design, costume, hair style and makeup. It has a Tim Burton-like flare, yet feels still weirdly grounded in reality.

The glue to this series outside of its amazing technical craft has to be the acting. Billy Crudup rightly uses this show as a reminder that he is a charming and engrossing actor. Every second he’s on the screen you sort of forget how meh the premise is (more on that later). Crudup isn’t alone though, and he is joined by some heavy hitters including Hank Azaria, Haneefah Wood, Nicholas Podany and Alison Pill just to name a few. Each actor really gets their moments to shine, and even some of the more over-the-top performances always feel organic within the narrative. This more bombastic style is nicely anchored by some solid emotional performances by the leads.

The problem boils down to a weak and paper-thin premise that never has anything remotely groundbreaking to say. In a different world, you could see this making for a fantastic feature length film. Only here what should have been 120 minutes at best is stretched to fit over 300 minutes of content. Sure, you can be dazzled by the top shelf acting and production design, yet, after the first or second episode the novelty has worn off. There is just nothing that interesting going on to smooth over the fact that the entire affair is underbaked and over bloated.

It’s nice to see a diverse cast, yet, weirdly everything is kept very heteronormalized. I guess even in this re-imagined future where sexism and racism aren’t a factor, (since this is never a source of conflict) Queer people are still resigned to the closet. Not to mention, certain important narrative threads are left dangling. There is this weird tonal issue as well. Frankly, you have a hard time liking most of these characters, even when we clearly are supposed to.

Like any good con artist, Hello Tomorrow! tries to dazzle you with its shiny technical and acting chops, while distracting you from a well-meaning if but ultimately hallow outing.

Hello Tomorrow! is currently available to stream on AppleTV+.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyPx64LjdJM]