Movies... Now More Than Ever!

The Best…

…Series I Watched This Week

The Studio (2025) — Created by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg
Streaming on Apple TV+

I got a big kick out of The Studio, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s send-up/love letter to the movies, which recently wrapped up its first season on Apple TV+.

The series tells the story of Matt Remick (played by Rogan), who suddenly finds himself the head of Continental Studios, a fictional Hollywood production studio that competes with Universal, Paramount, Disney, Warner Bros., Sony, and — increasingly — Netflix and Amazon.

Matt and his Continental underlings (played by Ike Barenholtz, Chase Sui Wonders, and Kathryn Hahn) form a madcap troupe of clowns who bluster, lie, and fight with each other in their quest to make Hollywood magic.

Early in the series, Matt laments, “I got into this because I love movies. Now I have this fear that my job is to ruin them.”

And by “ruin” them, he means that by taking his studio down the well-worn rabbit hole of superheroes and branded IP in pursuit of the almighty dollar, he will further erode filmdom’s place as a haven for artists and original storytelling.

To wit, one of the early assignments Matt receives from his boss, Continental CEO Griffin Mill (played by a frequently unhinged Bryan Cranston as ’70s-style studio head), is to make a blockbuster movie about the Kool-Aid Man. Oh yeah!

Ridiculousness, naturally, ensues.

What I liked most about the series is how well it blends Hollywood history with an insider’s knowledge of how the town works today. Rogen and Goldberg have been working in Hollywood for more than 20 years. They’ve seen it all, and their experience is reflected — and effectively satirized — in The Studio.

The age-old struggle of art vs. commerce looms over the entire season, but the series also tackles more specific questions that only Hollywood veterans would think to ask and know how to answer.

Like: what happens when…

• …a studio head wants to give a legendary Hollywood director (Ron Howard) a note?

• …a studio head wants an actor to thank him in a Golden Globes acceptance speech?

• …a studio tries to take diversity into account when casting a blockbuster movie?

Meanwhile, Rogen and Goldberg’s love of Hollywood history is reflected in the show’s many references to movies of the past, from Touch of Evil to Chinatown to Birdman, as well as dozens of cameos from heavy hitters like Martin Scorsese, Zoë Kravitz, Ice Cube, and Charlize Theron.

In this way, the series is like an updated version of Robert Altman’s The Player, a movie to which The Studio pays unapologetic homage in numerous ways. (I wrote about The Player back in March 2023.) In fact, it could have stolen the movie’s nonsensical tagline: “Movies… now more than ever!”

The performances, whether from its main cast or the stars making cameos, are funny across the board, with just enough heart to keep the show from careening into cartoon foolishness.

The series is also a technical masterpiece, and its camerawork makes the viewer feel like they’re inside the show’s highly-charged moments and conversations. When an essential reel of film goes missing from a high-profile film shoot, Matt’s anxiety is the audience’s anxiety.

But perhaps the biggest reason why The Studio succeeds is that each episode has a singular focus, concentrating on one joke and seeing how it plays out. It doesn’t delve much into character development or get bogged down in telling one grand story across the entire season. As a result, each episode feels fresh and puts the characters into an array of different (and often very funny) circumstances.

After watching the first season of a show, I often feel fulfilled enough that I don’t need to see another season. “Okay, I get it,” I say to no one in particular. Not so with The Studio. I can’t wait for Season 2.