What's best to watch on Apple TV+ during the upcoming free weekend
The second season of 'Severance' won't start until late in January 2025, but viewers can catch up on its first season -- image credit: Apple
Apple is cutting down on blockbuster movie theater releases and one impact is that the profile of its Apple TV service will be lower. Since the service consistently has only a small fraction of the audience that Netflix and Disney+ get, Apple has been working to get it in front of more people.
As recently teased, the latest attempt takes place on the weekend beginning Friday 3 January 2025 and ending Sunday 5 January. For those three days, the whole of Apple TV+ will be free to watch without subscription.
This weekend, see for yourself.
Stream for free Jan 4-5. pic.twitter.com/8p6PCUYpms-- Apple TV (@AppleTV)
Originally, Apple announced the free weekend as being only the Saturday and Sunday, which seemed odd since many people will still be on a Christmas/New Year break on the Friday. Then, too, Fridays are often when new episodes of shows drops, but this time only the season finale of "Silo" is due on January 3, 2025.
New viewers can now catch that as soon as it drops on Friday, but truly new viewers should race to see "Silo" from its season 1 opener. And they should prepare to lose most of the weekend binging on the drama.
It's a curious thing but for just about the only time, you can argue that there is too much to watch on Apple TV+. Alongside "Silo" and "Severance," there are more superb dramas such as "Slow Horses," "Bad Sisters," "For All Mankind," "Lessons in Chemistry" and so many more before you even get to comedy -- or films.
Apple TV+ has a poorer track record with films, but its highs are high. The late 2024 movie "Wolfs," for instance, immediately became the most-watched film in the streamer's history.
And then no streamer can ever take away from Apple TV+ the fact that it was the first, and remains the only, one to win a Best Picture Oscar. It got that Academy Award for "CODA," which like all of Apple's shows remains available to watch.
That's actually a key differentiator between Apple and at least services like Disney+ and Amazon Prime. It might cancel shows -- and it's a tragedy that "Schmigadoon!" didn't get a third run -- but it doesn't remove them from the service.
It just doesn't add shows all that often, either. Unlike with the Apple Vision Pro, though, this doesn't appear to be because the shows aren't being made fast enough, it's because Apple TV+ is careful what it commissions or produces.
Apple also does not do what might have been expected, which is to buy in whole libraries of shows from other firms -- although it is rumored to have discussions with MGM.
If you stream it, they should come
You can look at Apple TV+ as having a fine collection of shows and films, perhaps even an exceptional one. But apart from when you just have two days to sample it, the service still feels limited compared to others.
Given that Apple won't release details, and you'll go cross-eyed trying to count them yourself, the latest figures available are from November 2023. Streaming aggregator Reelgood estimated that Apple TV+ then had 139 shows and 69 movies.
Amazon Prime, for comparison, was then estimated to have 2,135 shows and 12,071 movies. Netflix had 2,495 shows and almost 4,000 films.
So in late 2023, the Apple TV+ catalog was around 3.2% the size of Netflix's -- and 1.46% the size of Amazon's.
To be fair, Netflix has been building its audience since 2007, and Amazon actually beat it by a year, coming out as Amazon Unbox in 2006. Plus Amazon's offering is part of its Prime membership option, so there will be people who have Amazon Prime Video yet never watch it.
Apple is a newcomer to streaming, but even at its start in 2019, it had something its rivals didn't. At launch, Oprah Winfrey explained that she was bringing her book club to it because "Apple is in a billion pockets, y'all."
Within two years, Apple had announced that this had doubled to two billion active devices worldwide.
Since the Apple TV app is available on just about every Apple device bar the Apple Watch and the Apple Pencil, it's startling how few subscribers the streaming service has. There's no way to be definitive about how many it has, since Apple won't say, but it appears to be comparatively few.
According to the Spanish site Evoca.tv, in August 2024, Apple TV+ had "over 25 million subscribers." That does presumably include people who only get it because of a free trial or because Apple TV+ is included in all tiers of the Apple One bundle, though, so it isn't a fair count of how many people are watching.
Whereas the same site claims that, for instance, Netflix has more than 282.7 million subscribers. Apple TV+ therefor has less than 9% of Netflix's audience.
So if, subjectively, the shows on Apple TV+ are exceptional, something else is stopping most of two billion Apple users subscribing to it. That could come down to people just not knowing of the service, though "Ted Lasso" became a breakout hit and it's been followed by "Slow Horses" and "Severance," shows that have had wide press and attention.
Ultimately, that may be what makes Apple TV+ a hit -- the fact that it does genuinely keep on making exceptional television. But people won't watch if they don't know about it, so Apple has always tried getting Apple TV+ to new people, such as subscribers to Canal+ in France, or in-flight with Air Canada.
Apple has never given free access to its whole service before. It may not have done so now, either -- the company has not said whether all of its subscription sports will be included.
But even opening up everything else for free is a new and a big move for Apple. It's curious that out of the entire year, it has possibly picked the quietest weekend for new shows and films.
Except it is the first weekend of 2025. Expect every show, every episode, and every movie, to be prefixed with an ad promoting the new series coming in the next few months.
Updated: 4:35PM Eastern with news that Apple has extended the free weekend to include Friday, January 3, 2025.
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Comments
As I understand things, Apple bought the distribution rights for CODA after the film had been made. They did not commission it. What did Apple contribute to winning the Oscar? Would it not have won if it had been distributed in a different way?
As a sort of disclaimer or full disclosure: I have no other streaming subscriptions and have never tried any others. Maybe they are no better despite having a lot of content.
Yes, Apple spends lavishly on high-quality productions, often with A-list stars for Apple TV+. But big budgets, high quality and major stars do not guarantee hit television. To some degree, you need a quantity of shows that Apple TV+ lacks if you're going to convince people to pay a monthly subscription. There's an old saying in TV circles that "hits happen." You really can't plan for them. Consider that Ted Lasso--the biggest hit on Apple TV+ by far and the #1 most streamed show, period, for all of 2023--is a very well-made but fairly traditional sitcom. Not exactly what you think of first when you think of Apple. And no big stars beyond Jason Sudeikis. Yet that's the show that really took off. Greenlighting more shows gives you more opportunities to find the next Ted Lasso.
Honestly, one free weekend feels like not much time to persuade people to take on another subscription. I'll be curious to see how this goes.
I think they've largely demonstrated that they have the right people, people with taste, picking which shows they produce and which movies they acquire. They've had very few duds ("Mr. Corman"?) and even those weren't close to as bad as the worst that Netflix or traditional broadcasters produce or acquire. But overall they are doing very well in that regard and they're absolutely killing it in Sci-Fi, which has always been one of the worst genres for other streamers and broadcasters. Plus, they are obviously going for high quality international shows like "Pachinko" or "Drops of God". As long as they continue that, they'll be successful as they build up a very high quality catalog.
Frankly, they are doing better in that regard than Disney+, which has a very deep and broad catalog, but is struggling to produce new, high quality content to keep people engaged in streaming.
It's no secret that Apple TV+ has pursued a small quantity (compared to its competitors) of higher quality shows that serve to burnish the Apple brand. I love TV+ content, especially sci-fi. It's also no secret that this strategy isn't working in terms of growing subscribers significantly for the service, especially considering 2 BILLION Apple devices in the world. You can say there's a lot of lower quality crap on Netflix, Amazon and Disney, but their subscriber numbers absolutely dwarf Apple's. Plus, Netflix and Disney subscriptions are much more expensive! Heck, even smaller services like Max and Peacock have many more subscribers than Apple. What's the common denominator among all the services that are bigger than Apple? Much more content. And this is where I wonder what Apple's goals are with its TV+ service. Despite winning an Oscar, it has pulled the plug on theatrical releases of movies (which HUGELY pissed off everyone connected with the Clooney/Pitt movie "Wolfs" that was supposed to be in theaters) and the TV industry rumor mill suggests that Apple is clamping down on its spending for TV+, overall. So... it's not clear to me what Apple wants from its TV+ service.
Back to Apple: I wonder if they can do a deal with excellent independent distributors, like Criterion, to bring some real gems to our screens…