The Observer.

"The Studio" from AppleTV+, "Miss Sherlock" and excavating the Max app, the "Assassin's Creed" movie is better than you'd think, plus some home shows.

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The Observer is a curated collection of television series and films.

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It’s possible that AppleTV+ will end up with a nice percentage of the best shows of 2025 on year end lists and “The Studio” is absolutely a slam dunk for one of those, but that’s not at all what I found most interesting recently, so more on that below.

Big if true. Also: True.

But first, I recently headed over to the Max app to kill it. It stood out as one of the more expensive streaming apps I’m decidedly not using, a testament to the “Discovery” part of the company Maxing everything up (the app, direction of the company, etc.) for some time now, and in the process watering down the HBO brand to such a degree that I often forget it still makes shows.

In current context, I’ll note that I’m not into “The White Lotus,” so that’s not a title drawing me to Max. But I knew, with such a deep vault and an app with such shitty functionality, that there was probably plenty of content I still wanted to see but wasn’t finding, even actual Discovery shows.

So I decided to make a list of what was on Max that would merit keeping it around. I just did this with BritBox in case you missed it, and the results are in the link below:

"Ludwig" and the continued brilliance of David Mitchell.

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