Apple TV+ show 'Amazing Stories' gets frosty initial reviews

Apple TV+ is due to release its new 'Amazing Stories', produced by Steven Spielberg on Friday. March 6. However the initial reviews of the show are in, and they aren't good.

So far, two initial reviews of the first episode have proven fairly damning. The first is from cbr.com who said:

The New Amazing Stories Is Not Very Amazing

Apple only provided the series' first episode for critics to review, so maybe the next four installments will be more creative and exciting. As it stands, the opening episode, "The Cellar," is a warmed-over version of a creaky Twilight Zone or Outer Limits premise. It's bland and forgettable, although far from terrible. It's a basic time-travel love story that seems designed to appeal to Outlander fans, although there's nowhere near the romantic intensity achieved on the popular Starz drama. Instead we get mild passion between modern-day home-renovator Sam (Dylan O'Brien) and Evelyn (Victoria Pedretti), a young woman in 1919 who's been pushed into a marriage of convenience.

CBR said that the twists in the plot often felt like delaying tactics, and that surprise reveals were often really obvious. They also pointed out that for a show with a $5 million-per-episode budget, the show looks "remarkably threadbare":

The old-timey town where Sam ends up could have been lifted right from a low-budget direct-to-video Western.

Another review from The Spool said:

Apple TV+'s reboot of the Spielberg-created anthology series gets off to a lackluster start.

There's something really special about an anthology series: it allows show creators to let their imaginations run wild and try different concepts that may not work for a movie or longer series. Apple TV+'s latest series, Amazing Stories, has the fledgling streaming service trying its hand at the format, but the episode available for preview doesn't live up to the show's title.

The Spool also criticized the show's characters, which says aren't that interesting. It concludes saying:

It's hard to judge an anthology series on just one episode. For all I know, this could be the only dud in the entire series. However, with Apple TV+'s track record of mediocre content, every episode needs to be spectacular if Apple wants to convince viewers to choose their service in an oversaturated market.

Of course, the beauty of this sort of thing is that one March 6, we'll all get to make up our own minds about the show. Hopefully, some of you like it more than these guys did...